Epitaph roll out the melodies on this excellent disc with "East of the Moon," styled after
Roxy Music's opening track/anthem to their 1979 epic
Manifesto -- and it's just as effective. It's quickly followed by a stylistic change, folk guitar, keyboards and heavy vocals which make "Evermore" a solid hard pop outing in the vein of the Sutherland Brothers & Quiver. The dark greys of the CD artwork and slick eight-page booklet don't adequately reflect the sounds at play on the first two tracks, though things do get bleak with the driving "Cold Rain," which borrows heavily from
Ian Gillan vocally and
Deep Purple rhythmically. Guitarist/vocalist Cliff Jackson's production is crisp and clean, the title track chock-full of hooks and sweeping sounds. While no new ground is broken here, the collection of sounds from the past sprinkled throughout keeps each track exciting, older listeners finding elements of favorite tunes tucked into all sorts of nooks and crannies on this CD. It'll keep your brain engaged trying to figure out where each riff was nicked from. The difficult thing is the timing of it all: this disc is so intense, magical and satisfying that it would have fared better in a more friendly environment -- like 1975 or 1989 or some time in the past where radio could have embraced the solid production and playing. The acoustic "Ships (In the Dark)" is so elegant it could fit inside
Richard Shindell's
South of Delia disc next to his "The Humpback Whale," which is a musical stretch for this ensemble, and a very nice one at that. "Hole in My Head" could be a lost track from
John Stewart's classic Bombs Away Dream Babies, these blokes are all over the musical map in a very good way. The 11 tracks and bonus "radio edit" of "East of the Moon" included here will be hard to top on a future outing, but they make the need for that follow-up to this one hour of music very necessary. ~ Joe Viglione