Elf Power

Elf Power metamorphoses with In A Cave

By Deirdre Sayre

Photos by Justin Evans

As the first warbling strains of “Owl Cut (White Flowers in the Sky)” reverberate, spurred by an irresistible 6/8 drumbeat, it’s obvious that Elf Power is indeed, as singer/ guitarist Andrew Rieger states, “going into new places that we’ve never gone before.” It’s the band’s eighth album and, for a band always associated with playful eclecticism, it marks a bold step forward.

“It’s got weird psychedelic passages and straight up pop songs and weird little folk songs and straight up rock songs,” says Rieger. “It’s a diverse album for us with glimpses here and there of stuff we have done in the past, but as a whole it doesn’t sound like any one era of the band.”

Part of In A Cave’s evolution can be traced to maturity. When Elf Power released its first album in 1994, Faintly Clutching at Phantom Limbs, the band was just starting to understand how to cobble together lyrics and tape. “It was basically me fooling around on the four track trying to figure out how to write songs,” says Rieger.

Another key element is lineup change. “The style and songwriting changes on each album,” he continues. “There are different people playing on each album and each record has a different flavor to it.”

Guitarist Jimmy Hughes (Folklore), bassist Derek Almstead (Faster Circuits, MCoast, Of Montreal), cellist Heather McIntosh (Instruments, Gnarls Barkley) and accordionist Laura Carter (Nana Grizol, The Gerbils, Neutral Milk Hotel) all contributed to In A Cave, but the new album was particularly invigorated by the return of drummer/multi-instrumentalist Eric Harris (Ham1) to Elf Power, whose thumbprint can be found on many Athens, Ga. releases, including his seminal work with Olivia Tremor Control, Thimble Circus, Marshmallow Coast and Of Montreal. Previously, Harris played guitar on and toured in support of 2004’s Walking With the Beggar Boys.

“Eric’s involvement has been pretty great in that he co-wrote some of the songs with me,” says Rieger. “Usually I come up with all the songs on acoustic guitar by myself. [Eric] made me a CD of the instrumentals he was working on. This summer when I went to visit my mom, I sang in the car and scribbled down lyrics while I was driving. By the time I got there I had four songs done and I think that those contributions of his are pretty awesome.”

An integral part of the band’s unique and awesome sound is the Magic Tape Organ, an instrument created by Harris for another project, The Music Tapes, anointed by legendary singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt as “sheer genius.” When asked about the organ, Harris is testy.

“I didn’t build it so people could know about it,” he says. “I built it for me, because it’s cool.”

Luckily Rieger’s explanation is more detailed.

“It’s a bunch of tape recorders that are triggered electro-magnetically by a hacked mini-keyboard so that when you play the keyboard it [plays] a series of tapes of horns and cellos and flutes, whatever instrument you want,” he explains. “They’re all playing a drone in a different key. Some of them are different speeds; you play it like an organ and it sounds psychedelic and crazy and it’s kind of warbly and off-kilter because it’s old tape recorders.

“On a lot of those songs Eric, plays every instrument,” Rieger continues. “It’s not exactly a traditional way of recording but it worked for us.”

Harris’ contributions gave Rieger more time to work on the lyrics, which are resonant with imagery from the natural world, with lines like, “On my way this morning / I saw rainclouds floating by / Lightning flashing up above / White flowers in the sky, softly thru the void’s kudzu / Spreading out like vines that grow / Across the cold concrete.” Some of the more fantastical imagery of the Elf Power canon, like the unseen hand, resurfaces.

The darker moments of “Spiral Stairs,” “Paralyzed” and “Fried Out” are propelled by Derek Almstead’s buoyant bass lines, and Almstead’s return as Elf Power’s recording engineer (he previously recorded the band’s last album Back to the Web) only serves to enhance the band’s output.

“It’s been great to have in the band someone that has all the technical know-how to do the recordings and owns the recording studio,” says Rieger. “It makes it a lot easier to spend a lot of time on our recordings instead of being on the clock and worrying about spending a lot of money.

Elf Power was able to utilize this freedom in the studio by adding many of In A Cave’s more psychedelic effects, like the weird scratchings, tape squealings, swooshings and the braying on “Heads of Dust/Hearts of Lust.”

In 2006, Elf Power was picked up by Rykodisc. The move proved to be beneficial because “they give us a good bit of money to record with and they help us with touring overseas,” says Rieger. “They do a lot of great promotion for the band and make it so that with the Elf Power releases we just have to concentrate on the music and don’t have to concentrate on the record label side of it.”

In the fall, Elf Power, supported by former drummer Josh Lott, looks forward to releasing another Almstead-recorded collaboration, an as yet untitled album recorded with Vic Chesnutt from January 2007 to January 2008.

“Our collaboration with Vic began about two years ago when Vic asked us to be on TBS Music Road,” says Rieger. “We learned a bunch of his songs and some covers and played as a backup band. We hit it off and decided to do a record together. We recorded it on our leisure because he would be on tour then we would be on tour. When we were all [in Athens] we’d just go over and he’d just teach us a song and we’d run through it a couple of times and then we’d record it live. That was a different method of collaborating than I’d ever done because you have to really be on your feet. You only have a few chances to learn it and then you move on to something else.”
The Chesnutt album will be released on Orange Twin, a record label/conservation community Rieger started in 2001 with Laura Carter.

“Our first release was this ‘60s folk record by Elise only released on vinyl in 1968. We released that album Jeff Mangum did when he went to Bulgaria and that solo album he did, mainly just a bunch of local bands or bands that have ties to Athens. I run the day to day operations and the website; we have a big mail order business. Laura mostly focuses on the conservation community part of it,” he says, referring to the 155-acre eco-village, called The Orange Twin Conservation Community, located on the north side of Athens.

Aside from touring in support of In A Cave now, and later with Chesnutt in the fall, Elf Power is content to stay in Athens, where “it’s easy to find like-minded people to play music with, and where the cost of living is cheap,” says Rieger. “We’ve managed to tour all over the world and make a little money here and there, but we’ve never been too terribly professional. We jump into the van and blindly go for it, and it just seems to work out.”

www.elfpower.com