by Jenny Bennett 

It’s rare that I listen to an album almost straight through without hearing anything that bores me or that I dislike. I guess that makes me a harsh critic. But The Afters' upcoming album Never Going Back to OK passes my test.

Okay, so I’m just one music lover, but I have a strong feeling this band's second national release could really put them on the map.

The band got its start at a Starbucks in Mesquite, Texas where the future bandmates were working, when a funny thing happened – they discovered their common interests and eventually started making music for the customers in addition to tall mocha frappacinos and grande lattes. The group has definitely matured since their humble beginning in 2000 when they recorded a six-song EP under the name Blisse. They continued to play at local clubs until they were discovered and signed by Simple/INO Records, and eventually Epic Records, releasing I Wish We All Could Win in February 2005, which was compared to Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, U2, and even The Beatles.

For those who haven’t yet discovered The Afters, I’m not going to compare them to anyone because they really seem to have come into their own sound this time around. I can tell you that you'll hear a wide variety of elements – from the deeply spiritual Keeping Me Alive (I’ll hold you in, together we’ll never die. Your love is keeping me alive), a song slower than the rest but still rock – to the delightfully dorky pop stylings of MySpace Girl, which is about one of the band members’ wives whom he first met at a coffee shop and later found on MySpace, as so many of us do these days – to one of the shortest and most interesting opening songs for an album I’ve heard in awhile (a Magical Mystery Tour-sounding track The Secret Parade). And with tons of additional star power behind the title track (a lyric like That was yesterday. Never going back to easy. Never going back to the way it was, could be a metaphor for both their musical careers and their spiritual lives), and other songs like Tonight and Ocean Wide, I think this upcoming release is really going to blow you away. Not that their first wasn’t good (the fact that Epic signed them for mainstream promotion means they had something obviously marketable from the beginning), but the album just didn’t have the depth and variety that Never Going Back to OK will deliver when it hits the streets in late February.

In my experience, variety is the key element, lyrically, rythmically and melodically, both within a song and within an album, that makes one artist stand out from the rest. And The Afters definitely have that quality in their music.

Even as a tough critic, sometimes those songs you dislike at first have a way of growing on you, but after listening to this album through four times, I’m not the least bit tired of it. In fact, I like it more and more. I’d venture to say that at least 10 out of 12 tracks could stand on their own as something really special. And together they just may constitute a breakthrough album for this emerging group. This is the kind of music that could prompt people of all faiths to program the local Christian radio station into their regular rotation.

I hope the fans don’t waste any time getting their hands on this album. I also hope that the moment the new music begins to be heard will mark the start of a new era – one in which The Afters will never go back to playing at Starbucks.  

theafters.com [1]
MySpace [2]

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