Julian Lennon - Everything Changes (2011)

Everything Changes is Julian Lennon's first album in 13 years -- a long wait by any measure and one that seems even longer given that there's not a great stylistic difference between this 2011 album and its 1998 predecessor, Photograph Smile. Lennon is still mining the later years of the Beatles for inspiration, specifically the stately psychedelic marches that both his father and McCartney sang in equal measure. Julian doesn't sound strictly like either on Everything Changes; if anything, he sounds like he's following the path of Noel Gallagher, with Everything Changes mirroring High Flying Birds in its classy veneer and overreliance on lumbering midtempo melodies. Lennon does have a way with melody, so these go down easily enough, but there's not much distinction between the songs here, nor is there one with a melody powerful enough to pull you into the rest of the record.