Our Pick

Page 13

Artist-Forever

Album-Something To Dream Of...

Song-Full Circle

Label-Independent

Producer-Keith Dawson and Jamie Foulds

Forever maintains winning

ways with second CD

When Forever released its first CD, Welcome to Forever, in 2002, it didn't take long for the band to get noticed. Their first single, Here With Me, turned Forever into the most played Atlantic Canada rock band on Atlantic Canada radio for three months running and earned the group an East Coast Music Award (ECMA) and a Music Industry Association of Nova Scotia (MIANS) Award.

It appears that Something to Dream of ... will allow Forever to continue to build on the success they achieved with that first album. The new CD won the group their second ECMA and MIANS awards in the Aboriginal recording of the year category and earned them three nominations at this year's Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards in the best rock album, best group or duo and best music video categories.

The group's new album is dominated by love songs-some upbeat, some less so. Taken together, the 14 cuts on the CD paint a picture of a relationship gone very wrong. The album includes ballads along with hard-rocking cuts, and everything in between. There's even a Latin-inspired number-Sloppy taco-that, while highly listenable, seems to come at you from out of nowhere, breaking up the flow of the album a bit.

All in all, Forever's second CD should both please existing fans, and draw even more into the fold.

The five members of Forever all hail from Cape Breton, N.S. Vocalist Derek Johnson, keyboardist Stan Johnson and drummer Keith Dawson are from Eskasoni First Nation. Bernie Eagles, on guitar, is from Glace Bay, while Pete Christmas, on bass, is from Membertou First Nation.