"Every Night In Vegas" by Everything We Do
Review
Frequently actual songs grab me passionately and draw me into their embrace, but very occasionally I engage even earlier when the very title is so unusual that my first instinct is to say: "I need to hear this".
And so it was the case with the new single from Everything We Do (Kaity Rae and Joe Dolman), which is called "Every Night In Vegas".
If anyone knows of any other song which has previously had this title, then you are more informed than me. Personally, I consider it unique.
It's a romantic metaphor rather than a "Casino" type tale of crime & mayhem: the subtext being "I'm betting it all on you".
From this original starting point comes what is the lyrical highlight of their career to date.
Collaboration is a most delicate flower: sometimes the most promising ones on paper just don't gel and if they are to work, the outcome needs to exceed the sum of the parts.
In this case, the two of them had, as you'll know from previous articles, been writing together well before the group was formed & so the compatibility was established. I'm less aware of the effect on Kaity's writing, but I wonder if any Joe fan, reading the lyrics a couple of years ago would have attributed them to him? The partnership does seem to have moved him artistically into new areas where he'd not have otherwise ventured.
I had a chat with him a couple of weeks ago & raised with him my concern that having worked so hard for so long in establishing his name & artistic identity, a break in solo activity might result in lost career momentum.
What struck me, quite apart from what he said was how relaxed and at ease he was regarding the matter. He will not be dropping his solo career, but is obviously so pleased by how Everything We Do is going that this currently takes priority.
There was justified pride in his voice & words & that alone tells a story. The trust they clearly possess in each other as well as the strength of their co-writing has led to something greater than what each brought.
Part of that is that inspiration to take paths untrodden (the vocal sound is another aspect one would not have expected on previous evidence) and part is probably the experiences each has had. This has resulted in what I'd characterise as an emphasis on quality control. This manifests itself in the attention to detail of the writing (and their performance skills enable them to pull off the feat of sounding relaxed & spontaneous in sharing a song into which a lot of work must have gone) but also the care to only release work which they perfected and, the most impressive of all possibly, to be very strategic in their live dates. Many new artists launching a new act could be forgiven for blanket touring to raise their profile: Joe & Kaity have favoured quality over quantity with fewer gigs, but those played in prestigious & suitable venues. They see Everything We Do concerts as sufficiently special as to ration.
"Every Night In Vegas" grabs the attention from pre-playing and retains it throughout. This is high quality popular music but vitally it is highly distinctive. I don't think either party need worry about departing from how they had been making music before as this quality song is such a compelling artefact with the capacity to slice its way through the really densely populated marketplace. Joe is far from cynical (though he's level-headed and realistic) so I am sure anyone he works with is cut from similar cloth, and I doubt that this was written coldly to try and get a hit: but they deserve to do just that because of that degree of originality & because the song is a warm & well observed one about uncertainty & optimism being balanced, of reaching for the right words to convey depths of devotion and right below, underpinning the whole, absolute faith in a shared future.
This is a song about universal values, yet told in a witty & memorable way. May their efforts be rewarded.
