I first heard of The Evens through a Henry Rollins
anecdote, where he encountered them in Australia and dealt with a heckler in an
interesting way. Since then, and seeing this image, I always kind of associate
Rollins and Ian MacKaye together:
Actually, I am pretty sure that is Rollins at the
beginning of "All These Governors", but not positive.
The Evens consists of Ian MacKaye on guitar, Amy Farina
on drums, and both of them on vocals. If
that dynamic sounds similar to the White Stripes, the sounds are nonetheless
completely different. The Evens have a more unplugged feel, and create more
interesting textures. As part of the Warmers, Farina was known for not just
sticking with the expected beats, creating unusual rhythms, and that happens
here too.
MacKaye of course is such an important person in punk
that I don't even want to try and summarize. On the surface, The Evens
represents a sort of mellowing, but I think (and I have not listened to enough
of their other projects to be really confident in this) it feels more like a
maturation.
There is still the awareness of societal issues that one
would expect from punk. The sound is more mellow, generally speaking, but there
is also something really primal in it. Some of that may be the stripped down
aspect of just have two musicians, but they do throw in other instruments at
times, and experiment with sounds.
Because of that primal element, it does not sound right
to call them sophisticated, but you will still hear that there is a lot of
variety and inventiveness in their sounds. This is especially true with their
most recent release, The Odds, from 2012.
There is continuity too. Compare the intro to "Get
Even", off of 2006's Get Evens to the more recent "Wonder
Why", and there is a similar sound, and yet those two songs are very
different, and they are different from the other tracks on their respective
albums.
(Formed in 2001, since then they have produced three LPs.
some singles, and one child.)
I feel like this is one of those reviews where my lack of
musical knowledge hurts more than others, so I regret that. In six months, I
will probably get completely different things out of them. However, yesterday I
got a great reminder of what tends to be wrong with professional music writers,
so hey, I could be worse.
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