Stephen EvEns is a right bloody oddball.
Seriously though, you never know what to expect next from the guy. His last album, Employee Of The Month, was, ostensibly, his ‘pop chart’ album, full of glittering, uptempo, infectious gems. But this? WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS???
That’s not even a criticism, believe it or not, I just genuinely don’t know what to make of Here Come The Lights, which opens with the tremendous ‘A Song For Europe‘, nigh on eleven minutes long (although the first and last four minutes are essentially just kind of ‘noise’ of tanoy systems, electronic bleeps and, possibly, crickets?). The build of this track is something to behold as the female vocals come in. It sounds fantastic, so it’s very odd to me that it then descends into an empty abyss for more than a quarter of the track. And then ‘Firefly‘, with lyrics of wild-eyed wonder, is like Leonard Cohen got all wistful and then started bashing whatever kitchen items were available as makeshift percussion instruments. I mean what the actual fuck?
If that all doesn’t already sound utterly bats, ‘BBQ Head-7 Bells‘ lies somewhere between Goldie Lookin’ Chain and Fun Lovin’ Criminals, before morphing into something not a million miles away from The Fire Engines. What ARE you, Stephen EvEns, what ARE you?
‘Lazy Eyes‘ then, is quite a relief when it comes, dreamy but maudlin, broken up briefly by a fiercely ‘Powderfinger‘ like guitar burst (the song, not the band), and then the jauntier ‘A Tree‘, which is akin to if Graham Coxon entered Eurovision.
The remaining three tracks, ‘Hello Salty Salty‘, ‘A Bee‘ and ‘Happy New Year‘ do nothing to diminish my opinion that Stephen must have dropped from another planet and decided to gave a stab at songwriting, so all over the place is the end result. Even the most commercial thing here, the rockier ‘A Bee‘ is innately unusual, from its opening lyric (“Knock knock, who’s there? A bee. A bee?“) to the abruptly sped up ending, as though EvEns just got fed up of it and said to the other musicians “Ah fuck it, FASTER! Now STOP!“
Anyway, it’s a fun album, thanks Stephen. You fucking freak!
