I HEARD YOU LISTENING

Where to start with a review of 'I Heard You Listening' ("Listening") the new album by echolyn? I will begin with how important I hoped this album would be for me. I took the day off from work on Friday, July 17th waiting for the digital download code as I had preordered the album on July 1st. At about 3pm (EDT) I received the email from Brett Kull and downloaded the 24/96 high resolution version (yes, I am a music nerd according to Brett in the email).

Now what to say about the music? Listening is undeniably the echolyn sound but subtlety different from the albums that proceeded it. It has graceful vocal harmonies, the beautiful quite passages counterpointed by more energetic parts that is the echolyn sound. It is easy to spot parts that remind me of the 2012 'Echolyn', 'The End Is Beautiful' or even 'mei' but with a fresh approach.

Listening is not simply a regurgitation of the past but a maturing and an evolution of their sound. Listening has parts with more of a hard edge with great guitar riffs and in others softer parts than I have heard since 'As The World' back in 1995. I hope a reader realizes how difficult it is for me to describe what I feel is a modern masterpiece. I always felt 'mei' would be the apex of echolyn but Listening may have surpassed it. It is a tragedy echolyn is not one of the biggest acts in progressive or all of music.

This album clearly really represents a labor of love for musicians who do it for the love of music meeting as they did every Thursday night for almost three years to produce this album. I will only mention one tract on the album, the tenth track which is only available for those who preordered the CD. It is not the most memorable and is the shortest at a little over three minutes and really does not fit the sound of the album but "Love, Why Weren't You Missed" was to my ears recorded as a very private thank you from echolyn to its fans.

Anyone who loves Yes, Genesis, Frost* or Spock's Beard, to name a few, owes it to themselves to give 'I Heard You Listening' a listen :-) because these five men from Pennsylvania just get right and with this album they have definitely done it again.