KingsQueens by Wayne Everett (Review)

If you take a look at his work with The Prayer Chain and The Lassie Foundation, it’s fairly simple to chart a progression through Wayne Everett’s music. Straightforward angry rock n’ roll led the Prayer Chain into tribal rhythms and sonic experimentation, which in turn led to the noise pop of the early Lassie Foundation. That gradually resolved into the purer Brian Wilson-esque pop overtones (fused with just enough experimentation to keep things interesting) of the Foundation’s final work.

Everett’s solo debut finds the former Chain drummer and Foundation vocalist continuing that arc, abandoning most of the experimentation that marked his work with The Lassie Foundation for a pure, classic pop approach. The results are a mixed bag.

That Everett knows his stuff can’t be denied. The tones here are sweet and pure, the inclusion of horns and mellotron give things a timeless feel, and the normal batch of stellar Northern support players (Eric Campuzano, Jeff Schroeder, Frank Lenz, Matt Fronke, Julie Martin, etc.) provide a rock solid base for Everett to build on.

However, the danger of doing classic pop is that it’s been done many, many times before, hence the “classic.” Unless you bring something truly exceptional to the proceedings, you run the risk of making a record that sounds an awful lot like a lot of other records, and that’s a problem here.

Everett hasn’t made a bad record. On the contrary, he’s made a very good one, but it’s one that seems overly familiar from the outset. Good stuff, but it just doesn’t reach the dizzying heights attained by Everett’s own work with The Lassie Foundation.

Written by Chris Brown.