Album Notes

Everett Young has completely reinvented himself.

The Atlanta producer has just completed The Ground, an album of huge-production moody pop songs that marry powerful, ultra-singable melodies with haunting orchestral productions, written, produced and conducted by Young in his Stone Mountain, GA studio.

The Ground is a total departure from Young's previous, more jazz-influenced work as a solo artist. The voice is recognizable, but much more mature. The songs and style are so different that it's clear Young has been in his transformative cocoon for quite some time.

In fact it's been 5 years since the release of his last album, What If, which though largely unnoticed in the U.S., sold several thousand units abroad. That album, which he released under the name Hudson Young (his middle name), drew rave reviews, and gave him the opportunity to tour and develop his stage legs.

An expressive performer, and a dynamo of a singer with a chameleon voice, Young is glad to be back on stage with his new sound. The Ground is the result of Young's last 4 years as a producer and a needed respite from playing and recording his own material.

Young considers this album to be his masterpiece, a long time coming but worth the wait. The time away has given him perspective and the ability to get closer to his musical roots. “In the studio, I so often find myself trying to get artists to go beyond what's current and get to the guts of their own sound,” says Young. “It's great to make the nod to what's hip, but what's unique about an artist is way more interesting. Seeing other artists wrestle with that truth has forced me to examine my own sins, and the truth is, what you get connects with more people and in a deeper way.”

And Young's true love, the music that you'll hear if you visit him at home, has always been serious, intellectual pop songs. “I love Simon and Garfunkel. I love the melodic stuff from the eighties. I love Howard Jones and Tears for Fears. Paul McCartney's melodies, even post-Beatles, which you can tell were inspired by classical music.”

“Everybody complains about how nobody's doing that kind of thing anymore,” Young continues. “People now proudly pull their favorite old CDs out of their old hiding places, but creating those kinds of songs is a lost art. It's like the word melody has almost lost its meaning. Of course every band bio I read says their music is melodic, and I wonder if people even know what they mean by that.”

In the last four years Young has produced and engineered albums for several artists, including Atlanta band The Sightseers and Tallahassee's Satori Bomb. Young also produced a beautiful, Nick Drake-esque album by the late Laura Pooley. (A song Young co-wrote with Pooley appears on The Ground.) Since completing The Ground , Young has written a dramatic and melancholy string arrangement, calling to mind the unmistakably international sound of the 1960s James Bond soundtracks of John Barry, for a song on the forthcoming project by Steven Satterfield, formerly of Atlanta's indie-pop band Seely

Also recently, Young has been spotted playing the Marxophone, a 1920s-era autoharp-like instrument with hammers, onstage with Atlanta's The Swimming Pool Qs. “Forget my album, Marxophone may be my greatest achievement,” says Young.