Into It. Over It. - 52 Weeks [Album]

No Sleep Records

August 20, 2009, 06:23 PM

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A double album, 52 songs, and it’s not even a greatest hits but “Into it. Over it - 52 weeks” is not just an album really. Evan Thomas Weiss who’s written and recorded music with several bands (The Progress, Damiera, Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right, B A Start and others) one day came up with a rather ambitious project: writing one song each week for 52 weeks, each recorded and mixed in as little as 3 hours, each highlighting events and feelings that ruled that particular week. He then set up a website, where the tracks have been available for free download, and after a cool 300,000 downloads, the project was nicely packaged in a double CD to hit the traditional record stores.

The result is an intimate, warm and diverse piece of work, a diary written in notes. Laid back, meaningful tunes. Songs stripped to the essential that report not only facts but different states of mind, different moods, hence a different kind of music. Although “Into it. Over It - 52 weeks” is mainly acoustic and chilled, “a man and his guitar” kind of album. It breaks the monotony occasionally with more uplifting rock / punk anthems such as “A song about your party”. There are indie atmospheres in a “Pete Doherty meets Badly Drawn Boy” kind of song writing style, and it gets slightly heavier at times, like “The liquor your older friends bought”.

You may expect some bland fillers out of 52 songs, but it’s not the case, all tracks on “Into it.Over it. - 52 weeks” are written with the same spirit, professionalism and dedication. However, as good as the quality may be, I’m still not convinced about the double CD formula. It didn’t work for the Beatles, it didn’t work for Smashing Pumpkins and Guns’n’Roses and I don’t think it works here. It will be appreciated by fans who followed his project online but they will have undoubtedly have already downloaded the tracks for free. Everyone else will probably be put off by the idea of listening to 52 songs one after the other and will hardly give each one of them the attention they deserve. Maybe releasing a selection on cd instead would have given it a better chance with a wider audience?

A double CD is a bit like a king size Mars bar: some will handle it with ease, but most will find it too much for one sitting, no matter how good it tastes.

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