Music Feedback
New This WeekAround TownMusicFilmArtTheaterNews & FeaturesFood & DrinkAstrology
  HOME
NEW THIS WEEK
EDITORS' PICKS
LISTINGS
NEWS & FEATURES
MUSIC
FILM
ART
BOOKS
THEATER
DANCE
TELEVISION
FOOD & DRINK
ARCHIVES
LETTERS
PERSONALS
CLASSIFIEDS
ADULT
ASTROLOGY
PHOENIX FORUM DOWNLOAD MP3s



Elf Power
CREATURES
(SPINART)

Stars graphics

Of all the bands associated with the Elephant 6 commune of day-trippers and night urchins, Elf Power have shown the most staying power. With Olivia Tremor Control on indefinite hiatus and Neutral Milk Hotel AWOL, it’s been left to the Elves to fill the kind of neo-Tolkien psych-pop void that’s Elephant 6’s bread and butter. And Creatures, Elf Power’s fifth album, is arguably their best yet. It’s certainly their best-sounding in terms of fidelity. Even though the material is rife with songwriter Andrew Rieger’s typically fantastical and portentous psychic musings on crawling demons, everlasting screams, and "old crones and black balloons," there’s a new-found brightness, a crisp clarity to the arrangements, that hasn’t always been there. Both "Let the Serpent Sleep" and "The Creature" are hook-driven, buoyantly Luna-esque numbers whose airy bounce masks the baleful warnings intimated by their titles. Elsewhere, the soothing oblivion promised by "Visions of the Sea" is as much Fairport Convention as it is Fables-era R.E.M. — a majestic slice of maritime folk-rock dread built on a blue-green bed of percussion, keyboards, and jangling guitars. Underneath its surface beauty, the sea has its secrets, and so too does this disc.

BY JONATHAN PERRY

Issue Date: June 6 - 13, 2002
Back to the Music table of contents.


home | feedback | about the phoenix | find the phoenix | advertising info | privacy policy | the masthead | work for us

 © 2002 Phoenix Media Communications Group