GREYFEATHER

3.5 stars. GREYFEATHER is the project of FARPOINT's Kevin Jarvis who is based in South Carolina. He enlisted the help of a bass player I'm not familiar with, but the drummer is from IZZ and based in New York. The guitarist is from LITTLE ATLAS and he's from Florida, and the keyboardist/vocalist is from ILUVATOR who are from Maryland. I mention their home bases because this band was never in the same room. And this took many years to complete. And the biggest surprise for me was that this sounds nothing like the music from the bands these guys come from.

I first spent time with this cd over 7 years ago and my expectations were fairly low to be honest. I do like some IZZ and ILUVATOR but I wasn't expecting a lot. This is really good! There's a theme here about the American natives as the band's name would suggest. And that 2 1/2 minute opener has this navajo drumming before this western/cowboy sounding guitar joins in. "No Name" is like this anthem from the 90's and it's uptempo and guitar driven with a calm and vocals on the chorus.

"The Fire" really resonates with me for some reason. it's simple enough with reserve vocals, and I like the soaring guitar. "Bloodstripe" is an instrumental with some prominent bass and piano before the guitar arrives and leads. I'll skip to "Lines Are Drawn" with the beautiful acoustic guitar and laid back vocals, as synths provide the atmosphere. The chorus features more passionate vocals and organ. Back to "Greyfeather Pt.2" and this is my favourite song here. And one of my favourite tracks of all of 2017. It's 8 1/2 minutes long and there's a native vibe like on Pt.1 but the chorus is to die for. An incredible track.

Now the album closes with two songs that dropped this from a solid 4 stars to 3.5 stars. Yes in my opinion they are that bad. Especially "Life Sonnet #4" which is so commercial sounding, but worse it sounds lame. The closer is better but not by much, essentially ruining what I thought was a pretty strong record. Interesting that those two final songs were the only ones composed by people outside of the band. And they both are thanked in the liner notes, sarcastically I hope. Kidding.

So in the end this is definitely worth checking out. A very impressive record that just doesn't end well in my opinion.