“Touring with P!nk has been great, playing in front of ten thousand people a night all over Europe has been amazing,” says vocalist and guitarist Jon Hume with typical ANZAC understatement. “This band has always been about the live experience and it’s great so many people are seeing what we’re all about.”
When the band – comprised of brothers Jon, Peter and Dann Hume (”some days you’d rather not spend 12 in a bus with your brothers, but you can’t always get what you want,” winks Jon) – first relocated from New Zealand to Australia, it became quickly evident what they were all about. Their 2004 debut, Dreams, introduced a young band with a preternatural grasp of pop melody and the ability to craft soulful, affecting songs. The plangent, yearning It’s Too Late (Ride On) from that record captured the listening public’s attention, spreading like wildfire across the Tasman and eventually all the way to the US, where the song featured on The O.C.
From there, 2006’s Real Life and this year’s Truth Of The World: Welcome To The Show have demonstrated that Evermore are one of the most exciting young bands around. All three albums have sold platinum, and the band have been nominated for numerous ARIA Awards and VNZMAs (winning two in 2007, for Best Single and International Achievement).
Now, they are proud to present Evermore to a whole new audience. A collection of the band’s best songs, it takes in the soaring heights of Can You Hear Me and Light Surrounding You, the aggressive groove of Between The Lines, the song that announced the band’s arrival, It’s Too Late (Ride On) – the record is more than just a “greatest hits”, it’s a narrative all of its own. To be able to track the growth of this remarkable band is a joy in itself; to do so accompanied by such strong songs doubly so.
Leading single Hey Boys And Girls is the perfect example of Evermore’s duality: what, at first, seems like a riotous stomp soon reveals, upon a more close listen, a scathing examination of what the Hume boys like to call the “trash media”. “It’s an upbeat party song that you can dance to, but with a bit of a twist,” explains Jon of the song that dismantles the celebrity media vortex and ‘infotainment’ industry. “We wrote it after watching late night TV, getting ideas from the strange shows and ads that come on in the wee hours of the morning.”
Plenty of artists would be content to end up with either captivating melodies or compelling lyrics, but Evermore locked themselves in their Melbourne studio for 18 months to find the perfect balance between the two. Such dedication is typical of both the band’s new material as well as the work that has seen Evermore make a name for themselves as one of Australian and New Zealand’s most respected and best-loved bands. After all, you don’t name yourself after a Led Zeppelin classic (The Battle Of Evermore) lightly.
As the band look forward into a new chapter, Jon Hume is excited to see what the future holds for Evermore. “It’s been a wild ride; all I can say is that nothing ever happens quite the way you expect it,” he says. “I’ve stopped having any expectations at all – just keep on moving forward and enjoying it. We want to travel far and wide, playing to whoever will listen. The night is young and so are we!”
