Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
No matter what you do, you cannot appeal to everyone at the same time, all the time…but you can certainly influence their thought by showing them that their range can be expanded, their love can be magnified; you might not be all things to all people but You Ain’t Done showing them that you have so much more to give.
The proof of brilliance is in the application and in the relentless pounding at the door, never giving in, never surrendering to one person’s opinions, and it is The Proven Ones that continue to surprise, that stretch the limits of understanding of the listener and attract new fans, because they refuse to play in just one musical arena, and it is to their new album, You Ain’t Done, that the scene is set on an album of individual scope as well as endless boundaries broken.
You cannot appeal to all, but you can to those with an open mind, with unrestricted hearts and souls who embrace change, rapid exchange of ideas, ones to whom see the sixpence and not only turn on it, but to whom see the creativity of the executed manoeuvre as instinct, as pleasure.
The album takes almost every style and genre in, it plays with the idea of being able to sit aside every box and refuse to jump in to any of them, refusing labels, adopting their own assertive aloofness, and as songs such as Gone To Stay, Milinda, I Ain’t Good For Nothing, Get Love and Whom My Soul Loves all leave their tangible, exotic mark on the listener’s ear, it comes to mind that the more comfortable you with the way you can change and embrace more than one genre, the more that you will dig, adore, this recording.
Kid Ramos, Brian Templeton, Anthony Geraci, Willie J. Campbell and Jimi Bott, alongside the excellent stamp of authority that comes in the shape of Mike Zito’s co-producing with the aforementioned drummer Jimi Bott, have proven, beyond any sense of disagreement that you are never finished, that in any ensemble, in any group effort, the drive never truly leaves you alone.
The Proven Ones’ You Ain’t Done is out now.
Ian D. Hall