Review Summary: Evans Blue shows progress and improvement on this sophomore release, and despite a lack of innovation and some serious overuse of song structure and dynamics, the band leaves a lasting impression through their clarity and artistic vision.
There are two different components to being a creative and original band. The first is that your songs sound different from each other, and the second is that in general, you don’t sound like other bands. A band like System of a Down would probably fit into the first category and to a smaller degree the second. Tool would fit into the second more than the first. Opeth would probably fit into both. So how can bands that neither differentiate themselves from their peers nor from their own songs succeed? That brings us to Evans Blue and The Pursuit Begins When This Portrayal Of Life Ends.
The dramatic album artwork, dense production, mysterious liner notes and intriguing lyrics would have you believe that Evans Blue is a band with great ambitions. They clearly take their work seriously, delivering heartfelt performances on each song, but the repetition and the generic nature of their work overshadow this. In a way they seem like they’re still kids rocking out in their basements, pouring their heart and soul into each song. Except, instead of cock-rock or grunge, these kids were listening to Breaking Benjamin and Incubus. The dynamics of the album rarely change; nearly every song starts off on a gentle repeated guitar riff with the slow introduction of the drums into a soft verse, then a chord-heavy melodic chorus, all wrapped up in the framework of a A-B-A-B-C-B-B song structure and done in under 5 minutes.
The exceptions to this rule, in the spirit of the law if not the letter (there are technically several songs that exceed 5 minutes but that isn’t really the point) are the two final songs on the record, Painted and The Pursuit. Painted fills its 9 minutes with the sonic ups and downs of every other song, but an uncharacteristic ear for avoiding repetition saves the song from getting bogged down in its own grandiose aspirations. A better solo would have been nice, but in general it just seems like one especially long song rather than a non-cohesive assortment of riffs and breakdowns. It’s not especially better than any other song, but it sets its sights higher and achieves them just as well.
The other great song, the closing track and the first single, is The Pursuit. Whether the song title came from the album title or vice versa is a chicken-and-egg argument, but either way, they tie poignantly together as finally you understand what the evocative phrase truly means. To try to grasp a literal definition of the sentence isn’t what the band had in mind. Their goal is to use their music to cause feeling, passion, excitement, and emotion, and in that way they surpass expectations on this song. The chorus is inspiring, dramatic and heartfelt. Even good bands in this genre haven’t managed to imbue a track with the kind of urgency and meaning as Evans Blue manages on occasions such as these. The Pursuit ends abruptly, so that its beauty doesn’t dissipate with a typical fade-out chord. If there were such a genre as generic radio-rock alt-metal, tracks like these would be the classics.
However, these moments only stand out in what often feels like a sea of predictability and repetition. “In A Red Dress And Alone” and “Shine Your Cadillac” take things in a marginally more aggressive direction for a while, but unfortunately they don’t stay that way for much longer. I’m not saying that I wish this album was heavier, but if there had been a bit more from time to time, the album would feel less dynamically flat. As it is, the ballads are nearly indistinguishable from the rockers, with only tempo changes and a hard-edged rhythm guitar part here and there to mark the songs as at all different. The band also likes to invoke the same feeling with each song, which results in numerous similar riffs and melodies.
Other than the standouts, only the songs that break the mold at all get enough attention. Songs like “Kiss The Flag” and “Q (The Best Of Our Lives)” get swallowed in the general tumult, but “Painted” and “Fear” and its soaring, passionate chorus earn a more epic feeling. The verse riff of “Dear Lucid, Our Time Is Right Now” swaggers and stomps in a much more invigorating manner, but embarrassment ensues when an identical riff is found on another song on the record, “Caught A Light Sneeze-“ which is a cover song.
Still, though, the band’s charisma shines through the derivative elements. There are attempts to break free of formula, and none fall flat- it’s only when the band doesn’t try that it lets us down. Too dense, thoughtful and passionate to be merely fun and catchy, Evans Blue gives us a definite sign of increased musical maturity in the form of this album.
