EVERSHIP

This has been an incredible year for me in keeping up with releases of 2016. Someone wrote that he felt prog was currently in a slump, but not from my point of view. Not only have I brought home a couple of dozen albums this year that ranged from really good to superb, I even found an album that I would have given six stars to. By November it was time to decide which of the several albums I had my eyes on would become my final order for the year. I narrowed it down to three difficult choices and in the end chose Evership. And what an album! I feel as if I have found a second six star album. And the coincidental thing is that I heard about this album through a review written by the musician behind my first six star pick. Previously he had praised Tiger Moth Tales "Cocoon" and I had to agree with him. So I decided to trust his opinion again and I am sure glad I did.

Forget the track by track review or even mentioning favourites in detail. This is a prog album that clicks perfectly with me. It has dramatic, dynamic, complex music as well as wonderful vocal melodies. It has crashing, thundering, parts with rolling toms, swooshing synthesizers, and pounding guitars. It also has delicate acoustic and piano beauty. I feel the album is an emotional ride between excellent and blissfully mind-blown. If any part is not either of these then you know by the music that we are building up to it. There's heavy and light, modern and seventies/early eighties.

In short, I'll give you this: it's like Dream Theater's beautiful moments meet Queen's passion and drama meets Boston's more dynamic music with some Supertramp.

Or an analogy: this is like eating gourmet confectionery in the dark on the first listen. You don't know what you are going to taste next but each bite has delightful surprises.

But it's not just the music. Vocalist Beau West is the kind of singer that prog needs. He sings like, well, a lot like Freddy Mercury and James LaBrie combined. His voice is powerful, soaring, soul-shaking and then soothing and soft. A vocalist of any less talent wouldn't be able to bring out the drama in the music as well. Mr. West is the kind of singer that the seventies gave us and somewhat a rare bird these days.

And now for me, the second great surprise of Evership. Composer and multi-instrumentalist Shane Atkinson used to be in a band called Curious Fools, and wouldn't you know it, I have the debut album of 1994 buried in a box of CDs. I bought it in a Christian book store way back then and when I later was getting rid of a lot of my old Christian CDs, I felt I couldn't part with Curious Fools. Labeled alternative rock, some of the songs were just so freaking good. So I still have it, and you can count on me digging it up and getting it into my iTunes library real soon.

Which brings me to the final words of my review. The one disappointing thing with Evership is that I don't have a decent enough audio system for listening to this album. I have the CD copied into iTunes with Apple Lossless and I play the music on my iPod with a half-decent set of earbuds only. This album, however, needs to be heard on a really good audio system. It is sure to blow a lot of people away!