Every Now and Then
is the new album from John Renaud, playing songs originally showcased in the
mid/late 2000’s by his LA-based band Bridgework. Even though Bridgework officially dissolved
as a band several years ago, with the bulk of its members leaving the LA area
and dispersing to various locales around the North American continent, the
music lives on with Renaud, a founding member of the group and an accomplished
solo artist in his own right. Every Now and Then is his attempt to
record and archive material spanning over a decade of writing under the
Bridgework moniker.
Stylistically, Every
Now and Then sticks with a fairly standardized, college radio-ready alt-rock
format that paid dividends for many a similar band back in the 2000’s. Renaud’s current album carries forward that
torch, a kind of admixture of late 90’s/early 00’s post-alternative/post-grunge
(think late-era Foo Fighters, not knuckle-draggers such as Staind or
Nickelback), melodic SoCal punk-lite, and a few emotive asides thrown in to break
it up a bit. As a whole what one
uncovers with this record is a pretty well-hinged, honest rock outing that
wouldn’t be out of place on college rotation with other such acts of the last
decade. Lyrical schemes tend to be fairly
straightforward with a air of dogged earnestness, such as on the affecting “No
God or Heaven”, or the plaintive “First Try” or “Burn Me Out”.
Every Now and Then
has a tangible insularity to it that is most likely reflective of the fact that
it was recorded in its entirety by Renaud in his home studio (and mostly
crowd-funded by a Kickstarter campaign, no less), a notable feat in that the
album sounds great and is amply fleshed out despite the lack of multiple
artistic inputs, a tribute to Renaud’s varied musical talents. There’s little doubt that Renaud is an
effective musician and songwriter (not to mention sound engineer), demonstrated
by the fact that Every Now and Then
does much to funnel many of the post-alt artists Renaud obviously holds close
to heart.
That being said, a major hamstring here may well be Every Now and Then’s oftentimes
indistinguishably familiar sound, coming off like so many other similar bands
playing similar music. Though Renaud
states via his website that Every Now and
Then is an attempt to cull together songs written over a ten year period in
order to give them their due and to then move on as an artist, a listener may
well find him/herself tuning the record to the background after just a few
songs, given its centrist dynamics, well-worn contours, and at times over-cooked
subject matter. There’s little by way of
surprise on Every Now and Then, with
perhaps the exception of the somewhat out-of-left-field (yet appreciated)
“Orchestral Break” leading into the opening piano lines of “Picture Frame”, and
each new track, however well done, seems to bleed into the next, with few real
highs and lows, so to speak.
From the first track to the last, however, Renaud’s abilities
as a multi-tasker are on full display, and there’s not really an unpolished moment
on the record. Stand-out tracks include
“The Game”, with its well-placed chorus hook, “Hey Kid”, which is a nod to the
poppy SoCal punk idiom, the angsty “Another 4am Whatever it Takes”, and the
moody “No God or Heaven”. The
all-acoustic “Reaching Out” caps as a nice closer.
In all, though one knows what they’re going to get with Every Now and Then by the time the first
few tracks have passed, Renaud has made a statement here. The now-defunct Bridgework’s material has
been collected and released as a proper timepiece with Renaud’s well-heeled
studio chops making the release ready for possible radio play. And now an artist can get back to making new
music, and leave the ghosts of the past to rest. As Renaud sings in title track “Every Now and
Then”, “Anything you do, put your heart
into; If you can see it through, it comes back to you”. Indeed.
Bridgework
Every Now and Then
– LP
Reviewer: Reed Burnam
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