The Enemy Chorus

The Enemy Chorus – the album that was thought out in every respect

What kind of thing can attract a person’s attention to a band he or she has never met before? Probably every one would agree that this is band’s name in the first place and a design of their disc. Nevertheless there is an inexplicable passion for bright and sparkling things in human nature, which is by the way, may be used as a victim of marketing companies’ manipulations, sometimes really shameless. Unfortunately those cases when appearance doesn’t coincide with the inner content are not even an often phenomenon to meet nowadays but rather a boring everyday routine. But still there are exceptions from this rule and this is exactly about a curious art rock band The Earlies. Both the band’s name and a cover of their new album The Enemy Chorus are somehow reflecting its musical content. Bright psychedelic ribbons that weave traceries amid cosmic darkness depicted on the cover are similar to interlacing of sounds and arrangements of their songs and the name Earlies instantly associates with rock bands of 60’s and early 70’s. There is a share of mysticism and notes of folk in their music, electronics, pop and art rock, but the essential thing here is the sense of proportion that doesn’t let all these elements to turn into chaos. In short, take another glance at the cover, everything is there.

The Earlies – the band with the inner democracy

It is worth mentioning that The Earlies are unusual not only in the sense of music, the band’s line up is composed of 16 people and while one part of musicians resides in England the other stays in Texas thus The Earlies have all rights to have a rare status of transatlantic band. Probably such a membership has caused a richness of their musical palette, anyhow, sometimes it seems that the authorship of many interesting hooks belongs to deferent people, but at the same time they all harmonize precisely and correctly – it seems like democracy prevails within the band. Starting from the very first track No Love In Your Heart The Earlies try to demonstrate everything they are capable to, but this doesn’t mean that all the members begin playing their musical muscles at once, the demonstration consists in the aforementioned sense of proportion. The melodies of the instruments turn into well-ordered sonic stream calmly and softly and the song starts twisting around completely different genres. As a matter of fact the album abounds in diverse stylistic variations, but it must be said again everything is done with a good taste, there is no tossing about between extremes. It is really interesting to hear Foundation And Earth – a special attention in this funky spirit song was paid to brass and complex rhythms, and the Beatlesque vocal parties add an exquisite taste to the track. There is a number of excellent ballads here too, take a look at The Ground We Walk On and Little Trooper, while this songs remain absolutely different they posses some common features that can be referred to The Earlies’ characteristi.

The Earlies want to sound comprehensible

Sometimes those paths that sonic space explorers use to walk lead them up to such a deep bog that it becomes really hard for them to get out without any assistance, and the best thing that comes to their minds is to take a path which was already beaten by someone and carefully follow the direction signs. Actually the fact that such bands are using somebody else’s experience is not a problem; it’s just quite natural, but the problem is that they are trying to thrust into it being half backed and keep taking lumps during several albums to get the same results as pioneers of 60s- early 70s got. There is no need in deep analysis to understand the differences between The Earlies and other young experimenters – everything lies on the surface. The band’s most important feature is their professionalism and responsibility for the things they do. Yes, they use somebody else’s ideas too, but note how, everything is measured, efficient, beautiful and accessible despite the complexity of compositions. The musicians do seek new ideas, but together with the listeners - not in the closed space of their own, the band really wants to be understandable. If you like a beautiful and unusual music and you are not indifferent to the efforts of art rock’s new generation than The Earlies will be just what you need, the album is really good.