In the second act of their career, former prog rockers turned American post-rock champs Tides Of Man took a long route to their new release Every Nothing (Self-Released). For the uninformed, the proggier climes of their early work on the Sumerian label have been replaced by incredible dreamscapes of post-rock. It’s tough for any band to establish themselves in a style and then take a 180-degree turn, and shift to a totally different sonic palette.  However, in this case, the change that began on Young And Courageous was brilliant and for their die-hard fanbase, really transformative. I guess when life gives you lemons and your lead singer leaves you, you make lemonade and become a better band.

Every Nothing is fourteen tracks of patently gorgeous post-rock anthems. Well-written, diverse for the genre, and dramatic. Repeated listens open up these songs, with motifs and themes that will get stuck in your mind for days. Post-rock really is the genre for the aficionado with time to invest and a lack of musical ADHD that seems to pervade most listeners today in the Spotify age. If you are a fan of this music, you show up for the guitars, but you stay for the songcraft and production. Tides of Man seems to inherently know this about their fans, and themselves when they make music.

There isn’t a skippable track on Every Nothing. And taking the songs alone doesn’t quite do justice to the whole either. Still, if you have to single out some top tracks here include ‘Static Hymn’,  ‘Mercury Fields’, ‘Old 88’, ‘Waxwing’, ‘Outside Ourselves’, ‘Mosaic’, ‘Infinite Ceiling’, and the title track are all pretty flawless.

The band does a great job of dialing in that emotional drama with dynamic shifts from section to section, the tracks playing out like chapters in a story.

There is a great gift in knowing where your power lies as an artist. A lot of younger bands struggle to learn this and usually cannot dial into this idea until its too late. Rather than melt from a crisis, Tides of Man merely seized the opportunity and became who they were meant to be all along. Now with Every Nothing, they are among the greats of the genre.

8.0/10

KEITH CHACHKES