Imagine if three of the better singer-songwriters from your hometown got together to form a band. That's what happened to the the lucky folkies in Chicago. The resulting group, Sons of the Never Wrong, creates an intriguing blend of three somewhat divergent voices and works some magic in weaving them together.
4 Ever On is their latest release, and its a doozy. Unafraid to slam genres into each other, the disk is a evocation of the idea of "song," rather than simply music and words pieced together. Bruce Roper scores several direct hits on this disc, like the Celtic rave up "Looks Like Illinois" and especially in the second line groove of "Everybody's Gotta." Sue Demel probably invokes the singer-songwriter tradition strongest among the three artists. Her "Queen of Today" is a stunning ballad that many a singer would love to wrap their vocal cords around. And with quirky contributions like "Mobile," Deborah Lader suggests the voice of modern exploratory writing.
Backed by an army of fine musicians, the disc has a sound that many major label discs would kill for -- especially considering there are five separate production credits! Demel and Lader weave their voices together beautifully, and while Roper has one of those strange voices that lies outside the mainstream, he knows how to use it, giving a dry, somewhat droll delivery. The songs cover subjects from love and family to existentialist self-pondering. The title track is the happiest song about death since Richard Thompson's "When I Get To The Border."
If the Sons have a problem, it's that they wear their influences prominently. Sure, those seem to run from Victoria Williams to David Byrne to Jane Siberry, covering a broad gamut, but there's really not much outright originality to be found on this disc. Now, I've long given up hoping that there's much originality to be found anywhere nowadays, so I'll cut the band some slack. The only naff song is "Toast," whose quirky premise simply falls flat after a minute. Given the consistency of the rest of the disc, it's easy enough to pass over.
So forgive the bad prose sprinkled in the liner notes, and the weighty naïveté sometimes found in the lyrics, because this is a great disc that's worthy of some forgiveness. 4 Ever On is an example of why I began reviewing: to discover some great new music, and the Sons of the Never Wrong definitely deliver. Strongly recommended.
