Out of a ten-day dog-sitting stint in the countryside came Milwaukee-based singer-songwriter Maximiano’s second release: Rokeby. Rokeby is the name of a historic district in upstate New York, along the Hudson Valley River. It happens to be where Maximiano crafted these songs, but it is also a place named after Sir Walter Scott’s Rokeby, an epic poem set during the English Civil War, a time of chaos and division.
There are a few things at work here. The rural aspect comes through the album’s folkier cuts and arrangements. As far as Scott is concerned, the songs in Rokeby reflect a literary streak to the singer-songwriter, with lyrics referencing Rilke, Max Porter, Dickinson and Highsmith; but thematically, they also express…

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