Well, the men of Hyannis Sound are either pushers or pullers, I'm not sure which. They have delivered the most exuberant album in this COVID-related pandemic landscape. So that takes a lot of naiveté or a lot of chutzpah to pull off. And they do it admirably. Even with the darkest of tracks on the album, the singers radiate a youthful vibrancy that makes a smile appear on the face and lets the listener take a major Detour from the doldrums of the past 20-ish months.

I can't say what I was expecting upon first listen to the project released (Bootleg '21 is also out there if you want to go searching). I mean, life can only be so difficult living on Cape Cod and getting to do something that you truly love for three to four months. So that joy and happiness permeates all of this music from selection to execution. And that is super evident here.

All the music is great.

All the singing is great.

Most of the arrangements are phenomenal (except Think. I do not like Think).

All the soloists are great.

All of the production is great.

And the bops bop.

As usual though, I'm most drawn to the non-hyper pop and bubbly tracks. Fast Car is simply superb. It's very reminiscent of june's cover featuring Brennan Villines. I've loved the original forever, and this version just works on every imaginable level with the male relationship dynamic providing an even more poignant quality to the song. And Under the Bridge may make you sit down on the bathroom floor and rock for a moment. Or maybe that was just me. It starts off very smarmy and almost like a lounge-singer performance, but then you get to the chorus and it becomes this soul-stirring performance piece.

What was unexpected is the group's take on House of the Rising Sun. I'm pretty partial to The Lost Keys version, but this one is a close second. Noah Berg's arrangement starts off like many versions of Feeling Good so I was about to discount it and push the forward arrow. I didn't obviously, and that was the best decision of the night. There is something magical about Jordan Rubenstein's solo. The grit in the second half of the song is filled with a raw emotional maturity different from the usual display from the boys in pastel. He has a gravelly cry that both boasts of and belies his youth. That scratch on "sun" made me tilt my head to the side in disbelief that the producers let it stay in. It's a mistake that blesses us.

Hyannis Sound has a long history of recording perfection, and this is a good continuation of the legacy.

Every time I get the notification that the latest Hyannis Sound album has been assigned to me for review, a big grin seems to find its way to my face. The Cape Cod summer group has a reputation of amazing soloists and a collective energy that is unmatched by almost any other group on the planet. Pair that with some phenomenal current members arranging and alumni that fill in any missing needs for the group, and you have an ensemble that even in its worst years is still phenomenal.

If there's one big thing I noticed across a lot of the album, it's that the tracks are often elongated, and it often hurts the pacing of the piece. Start with the opening two tracks. Valerie hits the listener hard and fast in the opening seconds. However, after the bridge, it becomes a half-time soulful section that then gradually builds, adds a call and response section, goes to a second half-time section, before finally ending the piece. What could have been a very strong opening statement of the group being powerful and energetic balloons into a nearly five-minute musical behemoth. How Deep Is Your Love is very similar in adding a scat solo. These tracks have so many ideas thrown in that it is hard to follow the entire musical progression of the pieces and have a feeling of satisfaction after listening.

However, then we get Fast Car. This is the Hyannis Sound style that I have come to adore. Peter Carboni has an absolutely gorgeous voice, and the backgrounds are a perfect fusion of lush chords and rhythmic accents. Alumnus Jon Smith knocks it out of the park with this arrangement, giving the soloist the perfect backdrop to tell his story with every ounce of energy he has. I would happily listen to this track over and over again with no regrets.

I thought I had a good understanding of the capabilities of this rendition of the group, and then came House of the Rising Sun. This track is unreal. There is theatricality absolutely dripping from the speakers on this track. Alum Noah Berg has outdone himself with an arrangement that is unlike anything I've ever heard from this group. What starts as a very standard offering from the group becomes a descent into this dark and edgy explosion of sound. From there, soloist Jordan Rubenstein just delivers a performance that brings the track to an entirely different level.

When all is said and done with Detour, the small blemishes only minorly impact the overall appeal. In my past reviews of this group, I've loved the tracks that retain that sense of unrelenting fun and energy but without ever feeling like it was too many ideas thrown into one individual piece of music (H2O really stands out to me as the perfect sweet spot of embellishment and presentation). However, given the quality of all of the ideas thrown into one album, this release should be added to every a cappella collection nonetheless. Detour has a little bit for everyone while remaining accessible for both introductory and experienced a cappella listeners alike. It's still the boys of summer you know and love, but there's always something new to hear. Give it a listen.

It takes a special type of a cappella album to compile all of the songs I now consider way overdone ... and then make me love them all over again. Detour does just this; in fact, The Hyannis Sound makes yet another Valerie a cappella cover excite me. That alone is deserving of a "5".

Of course I'm mostly joking about that last bit, but I didn't even have to consider the possibility — Detour maintains such an incredible level of quality that my final score was never in question.

Let me clarify the earlier bit — it's not that I dislike Valerie as a song, but rather that I've heard far too many covers that sound as if a group is going through the motions out of obligation. Not with The Hyannis Sound, though. From the opening "Why don't you come on over?" in the background vocals, it's clear that the members are genuinely excited and having a great time. They're singing at their A-game in terms of tone quality and lead-like energy. For most of the rest of the song, it's an ordinary Valerie cover, but simply executed with all the a cappella fundamentals intact: a super expressive solo by Ben Vance is a great fit, harmony parts are matched to their optimal ranges super well, everything's in tune and the production emphasizes the sections that are most important at any one time. And then when steam starts to run out,  arranger Matt Goldstein brings in a clever call-and-response section that's just ... well, it's fun.

This type of care goes into every track. Not all of them have super experimental components, but The Hyannis Sound sings every moment of each song as if it's the best moment. The singers use a common set of a cappella tools to evoke a solid "wall of sound" — background word echoes, pad whole notes, driving but not overwhelming vocal percussion — and execute them with the highest attention to detail. And then the group elects a perfectly fitting and capable soloist, putting him in the right place at the right time (my favorite probably being Peter Carboni on Fast Car).

It also helps to have some super well-crafted arrangements. The standouts for me are Jon Smith's Fast Car, Jordan Rubenstein's Love's In Need of Love Today, and Matt Goldstein's Valerie and Bless the Broken Road. All have just enough of the essence of the original song that makes them so appealing and have great awareness of the individual members' ranges and abilities. They then add their own flair with great background lyric embellishments, interesting harmonies, and an overarching plan that ties it all together.

All of this is easier said than done. But I cannot stress this enough: these are a cappella fundamentals and are what carry so many groups from good to great, and from great to excellent, and from excellent to classic. Yes, there are moments where The Hyannis Sound adds interest beyond these fundamentals. The dialed up dynamic and texture contrast in Under the Bridge and Fast Car, the pseudo-mashup background vocal echoes in Strangers Like Me and Get On Your Feet, and the injection of more jazzy harmonies into How Deep Is Your Love are all much appreciated stamps of personality that give the album extra credit. But all of these work so well because The Hyannis Sound makes the more "ordinary" stuff just as entertaining. Without the fundamentals intact, the listener doesn't buy into the group, and then moments like these become cheesy. Detour, even in its sillier moments, never feels detrimentally cheesy. And sometimes a song doesn't need any special tricks at all — Bless the Broken Road doesn't do anything particularly new, but it demonstrates beauty in well-executed simplicity.

When all pistons are firing all the time, all that is left to comment on are nitpicks. Occasionally, a song tries to one-up itself a bit too much. Think has a lot of well-arranged individual components but perhaps tries to do way too much in a single span. House of the Rising Sun and Vincent both feel like they end and restart two or three times, the perceived fakeouts messing with song flow. Sometimes, tools that create extra interest either feel too similar to previously used tools or match them too closely in placement and application. How Deep is Your Love's slowly building layered interlude is great, but the song's placement right after Valerie and its call-and-response interlude creates some distracting deja vu. Aside from these points of over-indulgence, the album regulates itself super well to avoid more of them.

Establish a strong foundation, and experimentation will be rewarded. Detour is one for the books because it does exactly this. One doesn't always need to reinvent the wheel — sometimes, simply making a dang good wheel is the key to mastery.