Everyone
A feedback loop of butterfly melodies and open-hearted attitudes. Everyone blend the divine with the distorted. Take one listen of their debut album and you’ll see that this is California dreaming with a light at end of the tunnel, an American beauty with all the attitude in tact, ready to meet the British audience.
It doesn’t take the greatest analyst to conclude that labels have long had a problem transferring the American Christian market product over to the UK. Too clean, too grungy or just too different, it seems that there’s never really been a fool-proof formula to import. Until now: at last the lid is off and the mystery can be dispelled. For it is in the music of Everyone that we can finally fined the ingredients needed to cook up a little American action right here on UK soil.
The proof? Just one listen to the band’s home-grown take on 21st century worship will have you seeing the light. Mixing the realities of melancholy with the certainties of truth, the band somehow manage to churn out tune after tune that makes an instant connection with the listener. Just like those days from before the songs do more than simply stand out. They become part of the listener’s world, reflecting just where they’re at while at the same time offering a gentle nod towards the light. This is not alt.worship or worship lite, but something far more engaging and enduring, a brand of intuitive worship that lay’s what is true down next to what is real.
The band – a four piece made up of Jeff Searles (vocals and guitar), Darren Clarke (guitar), Phil Siems (bass) and Daniel Whittington (drums) – come from San Luis Obispo, a Californian coastal gem where the magic begins. There’s clearly something fresh about their lyrical outlook, but the tunes themselves owe more to musical developments on this side of the Atlantic than to the land of surf and perfect smiles.
There’s more than a hint of Fran Healey’s talent for crafting great songs in those that find their way out of Jeff Searles, and the comparisons with Travis are reasonably well made: both never stray from writing about things that are real and always leave a fine tune knocking around your head. But there are other flavours within Everyone as well, flavours that can be found in all the best currents of the UK music scene: a little groove, a couple of pit-bull guitars and a belly full of musical contours designed to make Everyone an experience far more than just a band.
As the first ever ‘external’ signing to Furious Records Ltd (the label was founded and is owned by Delirious), Everyone are something special. Not only do they bring on the start of something new – a new dawn of fresh acts and new signings – but they reunite a team that have worked together so well before. It was back in 1996 that Jeff Searles – then a worship leader at the San Luis Obispo Vineyard – contacted Martin Smith and asked for a little help. He’s enjoyed the Cutting Edge tapes and wanted a producer and band for his debut solo album. A few months later and ‘Inside Me’ was out: a tender-hearted, immaculately carved album full of brooding clouds and breaking hearts. It was a good union, and the synergy between them cannot fail to light a few smiles on this, their next project. |
