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My introduction to Even came via some performances by singer-songwriter-guitarist Ashley Naylor on SBS's RocKwiz. I found his solo performance very entertaining but when the first couple of lines of Get Off My Cloud came out of his mouth I was stunned. It was just so clear that Naylor "got" the song - he's obviously a big fan of music. So I went searching for some of Even's albums.

This self-titled album released in 2007 opens with I Am The Light, which is reminiscent of a psychedelic-era Beatles pop-rock track. However, like many of the songs on this album, it isn't that simple. There are influences from a lot of music, particularly from the late 1960s and the 1970s, and all of these these influences are infused into the music.

I'll skip through the tracks a bit because if I rave about every song then this is likely to get boring very quickly... :-)

I Walk On features an excellent guitar riff, vocal harmonies, and nice variation between verse and chorus. Superstition Blues features harmonica and slide guitar. It sounds like US southern rock played by a late-1960s British blues-rock band.

It is hard to pick favourites on this album, but one of mine is Which Way To Run, featuring wonderful playing by the whole band and some Wurlitzer piano contributed by one of the album's many guests. It is one of the album's bigger songs. For contrast this is followed by the acoustic and steel guitar based The Fool Who Made You Sad. I can't tell if this is a perfectly executed country song or if it is a perfectly executed spoof of a country song - I don't know enough about the band! Whatever the case, it is brilliantly executed.

I also think Tangled Up and the closer Pinnacle are exceptional songs... but then I think this album has no weak songs on it.

The production on Even is stellar. Some of the songs have a lot of guitars but they all occupy their own space and never become overbearing. The big songs have just the right amount of everything. The other thing that is brilliant about this album is Ashley Naylor's guitar playing - he plays rhythm and lead across all of the songs, managing to be continuously interesting and inventive.

I've already mentioned the 1960s and 1970s influences that pervade this album. There are influences from The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, The Who, Led Zeppelin and many more - I can hear a lot of music I like in there. Other bands like Oasis and Jet have also displayed a combination of similar influences but I think that Even do it in a more straightforward yet interesting way. There's also also a strong indy rock feel to the music, which gives it a slightly more interesting edge.

OK, enough superlatives! Almost. Ashley Naylor and his band are students of rock music who have mastered the art-form. They pay homage yet still manage to play interesting, new music. This is one of the best recent albums that I've heard in a long time. Recently I've listened to this album more than any other... and I heartily recommend it.