Eye Rhyme - Soul

Year of Release: 1997
Label: Small Dog Records
Catalog Number: n/a
Format: CD
Total Time: 45:00:00

Eye Rhyme is a Toronto area based rock trio. With the newly released CD Soul the band has two releases on their conscience and has opened for bands such as Big Sugar, King's X and Rusty. All three members are well educated musicians, and the material on this album is original, representing a wide variety of influences. The CD has 11 songs with running time of 45 minutes.

It's always fun to discover new indie bands, at least when they are good, and Eye Rhyme is good indeed. It opens with "Electricity," a groovy rocker with a funky edge. The song also introduces the fine vocals of Ian Graham, which are splendid throughout. The song has good variation, with many cool parts and elements. All band members are crafted musicians and the variety of influences in their music is broad. That makes it hard to put their music into any specific category. There are influences of rock, contemporary rock, heavy, funk, and prog rock have to be heard. The music is based around the great guitar work of Jay LeRoux who also makes room for acoustic atmospheric solos, and the vocals of Ian Graham, a mid ranged vocalist, is very impressive.

The bass and keyboard work by Graham himself is more prominent on some songs than others and his work is tasty indeed. Take for instance songs like the poppy melodic rock of "Distant Light," a song of pure class with good keyboard work, and the beautiful acoustic "Journey" for tasty bass lines. All songs are good, but the variation in style/approach from song to song, also result in some songs standing out as a cut above the others. There are automatically some songs that appeal to you more than other songs. This is the disadvantage of being varied and bringing on a lot of different influences from song to song. Considering this, I think the band is pulling through it very well, as all songs are good and well done, and not too varied for their own good.

The production by the band is very good, even more impressive is that it is an independent release. These are all skilled musicians and they do without doubt know how to write good, interesting, different and varied music. It might take some spins before you really get into this disc, but that's what characterises quality music. If you like slightly progressive rock/heavy with various influences, these guys are well worth checking out.

[This review originally appeared November 2002 at the ProgPower Online review site, but perhaps published even earlier than that -ed.]
Tracklisting:
Electricity / Stab 'Em All / Soul / Distant Light / Surface / Spaceman Serenade / Journey / Fragile / Mist / Dying Hope / Nobody's Perfect

Musicians:
Ian Graham - Bass, Keyboards and Vocals
Jay LeRoux -guitar
Cody Willems - drums

Discography:
Life Control (1994)
Soul (1997)

Genre: Rock

Origin CA

Added: December 18th 2004
Reviewer: Bjønar Bevold
Score:
Artist website: www.eyerhyme.com
Hits: 2569
Language: english