While most rock fans know
Mitch Easter as the man who seemingly produced every great jangle pop act of the 1980s and helped launch
R.E.M. into the indie rock stratosphere (at a time when such a thing barely existed), his work as a musician and a songwriter never seemed to earn the same degree of attention, which is strange considering how good most of it was.
Easter's band
Let's Active cut three albums and an EP which, by all rights, should have made him the darling of the college radio (and maybe even the pop charts) with their sharp hooks and insightful lyrics; but the band's following never seemed to grow beyond a small, but rabid, cult. Thankfully, that cult consisted of some pretty talented people, and a bunch of them have joined forces to pay homage to
Easter's songs on
Every Word: A Tribute to Let's Active. Significantly, the album's best performances are the ones that drift farthest from what
Easter and his bandmates had in mind; most of the participants on
Every Word seem to have their own take on what great pop means to them, and
Tommy Womack's skiffle-ish cover of "Make up With Me,"
Failed Energy Giants' (featuring Tim Lee) transformation of "Blue Line" into a surf tune, and the arty, almost psychedelic re-imagining of "Room With a View" from
Marti Jones testify to the diversity and malleability of
Easter's compositions. And hearing tracks like "Waters Part" by
Doug Powell,
The Crowd Scene's "Writing the Book of Last Pages," "Talking to Myself" by
The Saving Graces, and "Two Yous" by Drop Quarters is to hear great pop songs played with passion, intelligence, and imagination. If the original
Let's Active recordings communicated the same message, as well (and often better), that doesn't change the fact that
Every Word offers 20 solid examples of why
Easter deserves to be acknowledged as one of the finer songwriters of his time and place.