Sunday 14 July 2019

MUSIC REVIEW: 'Everything I Do' by 'The Side Project'.


'Everything I Do' could be siad to be the (almost) title track of The Side Project's up-coming album Everything We Do, being released on Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit records on the 26th July.

The Side Project are an American saxaphone quartet with a differnce; the difference being that although they might have started out and have their origina as a sax quartet, they now use many more instrument combinations, play differing styles of music and collaborate with other musicians too to expand their repertoire and genres even further. Somehow or other though, after listening to several of their tracks, they still seem to favour saxophones and very sparse scoring of their music. The advantages of this are that the individual instruments and their lines (whether harmony or melody) are more pronounced and you hear the cleverness of the music before you hear the beauty. However, for me, some of their songs are crying out for a much fuller and lusher orchestration.

Their latest single, 'Everything I Do' is one such track. It starts very inconspicuoulsy, sounding very much like a 1940s jazz song, and even when the singer Alita Moses begins we still get the essence of a bygone style of music. However this soon gives way to a male rapper who speaks the middle section of music bringing the piece bang up to date. A snare drum interjects and we are taken on a quasi-military advernture before the drum falls into background music and the jazz melody is taken up once again, this time with piano, as Moses finishes the song with the same monotonous and uninspiring lyrics which are repeated ad nauseam throughout this track. In fact as lyrics go, it's basic in the extreme.

However don't let that put you off. The feel overall is one of a contemporary twist on something a lot more temporal and earthy. Moses has an easy quality to her breathy soprano swing voice, and just exactly what genre and how to pigeonhole this music is unclear.  The Side Project themselves class it as R+B and Soul. Both descriptions fit but don't do it justice. It's an interesting piece from an interesting band and one I would keep an eye out for. I haven't seen anything of them over here as yet, they are still busy trying to make a mark for themselves Stateside, but if they do venture to the UK at any point, then I would definitely recommend your checking them out.

Listen to 'Everything I Do' ahead of its release here - https://soundcloud.com/rabbit-rabbit-rabbit/everything-i-do

Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 14/7/19

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