It’s hard to believe that Flyleaf is old enough as a band to warrant a biography. It feels like yesterday when I was blasting Flyleaf on my stereo system and rocking out to “I’m So Sick”, “Cassie”, and “All Around Me”. The memories of my first (and only) Flyleaf concert are so vivid it feels like I was there just the other day. That Flyleaf is now a decade plus band with countless tours and shows uder their belt is an amazing, and it seems fitting that a bio of the band show up at this point. Thankfully, Carl Phelan, the grandfather of guitarist Jared Hartmann, has us covered with Flyleaf Spreads Their Wings: A Story for Past, Present, and Future Fans of an Incredible Supernatural Rock Band from Texas.
Let me preface my remarks by giving credit where credit is due: Carl’s attention to detail, fact, and raw data is astonishing. This kind of book could not have been written apart from meticulous note taking and record keeping from the very beginning. Where many of the old articles and accounts of Sporos and Passerby are probably lost at this point, Carl digs them back up for newer fans to appreciate. If something was written on Flyleaf or any of their prior incarnations, Carl’s got it in here. This is without a doubt the new authority for information on Flyleaf; no Wikipedia or encyclopedia entry could offer the amount of information Carl presents. Unfortunately, there is a double-edged sword to this praise: this might be an informational goldmine, but straightforward information can (and often is) boring to chug through if not presented well, and sadly Flyleaf Spreads Their Wings suffers from this to some extent.
The subtitle of the book bills it as being a story about Flyleaf, and while that is true in a de facto sense – it does cover the genesis of the band back to when Sameer began teaching Jared how to play guitar all the way to present Flyleaf – the presentation of the material prevents it from being an engaging read. Sure, there are plenty of interesting things to read about, but the story is buried underneath a very repetitive presentation of information marked by a lack of personal antecedent. Most of the chapters are structured in a similar fashion, sometimes with the same information repeated nearly verbatim between sections. This lends well to presenting the amount of information included in the book, and makes it easy to find a particular detail or fact, but not necessarily the most engaging of cover-to-cover reads.
All this points to the biggest problem of the book – a lack of editing. Aside from the countless basic grammar and capitalization errors that easily could’ve been corrected via proofreading, it’s apparent this book didn’t go through a editing process to help its presentation. Though the book is now the go-to authority for information on Flyleaf, it fails to tell an engaging story, and had it gone through an editing process the final product would’ve helped secure a broader range of readers outside diehard fans of the band.
If you’re a Flyleaf fan, you will enjoy reading through this, and nostalgia will wave over you just as it did to me while I was reading it. However, a lackluster presentation and a lack of editing prevents this book from being a must read. Flyleaf fans ought to check this out; others, at your own discretion.
The Closing Track 