The Earlies reviewed
The Earlies
The Enemy Chorus
(Secretly Canadian)
Released nearly two-months ago, The Earlies’ second album is every bit as challenging as the day we cracked the cellophane wrap, a spinning mass of amebic prog and virtual CS&N harmonies.
Maybe that describes Yes also, but there’s nothing near virtuosity for virtuosity’s sake on The Enemy Chorus. Stirring vocal harmonies on “Foundation And Earth” combine with a rhythm track that seems to have been cut in half, practically inducing vertigo as baritone sax, malevolent keys, and cosmic blips squeeze into the most inefficient blast-off imaginable. While “Foundation” hardly embodies Enemy, it’s best to make it an example instead of rambling for days on each song (don’t even start on the Terminator synths of “No Love In Your Heart”). It’s an album either hopelessly out of step with everything going on around it, or completely ahead of the spectrum and ruining the bell curve. The only damaging thing is its emotional disconnect, lost somewhere in the futurismo. Loaded with grand titles (the ELO-ish stomp er “When The Wind Blows,” “The Ground We Walk On”) and even grander arrangements (check the layered, Styx-ian chanting on “Broken Chain”), what The Earlies want to say (something conceptual about endangering the future) never approaches the importance they place on how it sounds. It could be asking too much from a band half in Texas, half in England to make anything but generalizations while exchanging tapes. Or perhaps they’re saying this is the best we can hope for. Either way, we’ll take it.
— Steve Forstneger
Click here to download “No Love In Your Heart.” http://www.scjag.com/mp3/sc/noloveinyourheart.mp3
