Evolver (CD)

The idea behind this album is hardly new. It's now a commonplace for Britain's Mojo magazine, for example, to include a cover disc on which various contemporary artists record a classic album in its entirety, most often one by the Beatles.

What makes this album unique however is that it is -- as far as I'm aware -- the first time a single New Zealand artist has revisited a classic album and recorded their version of every song. And the album in question is by the Beatles.

Here Matthew Bannister (formerly of the Flying Nun band Sneaky Feelings and many other subsequent groups) under his most recent nom-de-disque One Man Bannister undertakes his own interpretations of this remarkable album. 

It is quite a stretch for one person -- Yellow Submarine to Eleanor Rigby, let alone Tomorrow Never Knows -- and made more so when it is just done at home as a labour of love.

But, against those formidable odds, this is not just very good indeed but it cuts dead some of those English or American outfits who have done similar things for a giveaway CD on a British magazine.

Tracklist:

1. Taxman
2. Eleanor Rigby
3. I’m Only Sleeping
4. Love You To
5. Here, There and Everywhere
6. Yellow Submarine
7. She Said She Said
8. Good Day Sunshine
9. And Your Bird Can Sing
10. For No One
11. Dr. Robert
12. I Want to Tell You
13. Got to Get You into My Life
14. Tomorrow Never Knows