Everyst

A review of their album 'Planet Express'

It's very easy to be scathing about an album like this, so I'm going to try hard not to be. Firstly the sleeve design is not something that fills you with confidence, looking like something you'd pick up in Compustore for 5 Euro. Secondly, the lyrics are trite, moon-rhymes-with-June efforts, e.g.

"Life's not a game but all the same
There are winners and losers
I've felt the pain so don't let me lose
Cos winners are bruisers"

So the music? Well, track five "Breaking the Rules" wouldn't sound out of place in Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. And I'll leave that up to yourself to decide if that's a good thing or not. The vocals are bland and smooth, thankfully skipping over the lyrics that are as uninspiring throughout the album as the above example suggests. The formula throughout the record is fairly simple, a solid bass laid down with (admittedly some half decent) piano melodies, a bland verse, a pre-chorus guitar lick or two, the two members of the band then harmonise over the chorus.

On the positive side, the production values are high, and sleek. It's obvious that Yann O' Brien and Scott Newman put a lot of work into this, it's just a pity that the end result leaves so little evidence of originality, or desire to make an album that can challenge people, instead of being background music for Dublin 4 dinner parties.

Ciaran Wrenn