(2022) Elk City - Above the Water



Review:
The Montclair-based art-pop band Elk City has made another engaging and evocative album, Above the Water. With a vibrant, varied sound, the album benefits from powerful guitar riffs, a consistently pleasing beat, and Renée LoBue’s elegant and ethereal vocals. The album’s songs focus on soul searching and, as LoBue said in press materials, “living on the outer edges of what it means to explore oneself.” “For me, inspiration comes from unknown places — I never stop to question my motives when creating,” said drummer/producer Ray Ketchem. “I follow where the song is leading me.” Joining Ketchem and LoBue in the band are bassist Richard Baluyut of Versus, and guitarists Sean Eden of Luna and Chris Robertson of the Psychedelic Furs’ side project, Feed. The fresh sounds were motivated by, Baluyut said, the desire “to travel to fractured worlds.”

***


…“Someone’s Party” is a dreamy pop piece that would have been as just as at home in the hands of bands such as The Darling Buds in one of their more fey, less direct, and chirpy moments. “Your Time Doesn’t Exist” plays with 60’s pop psychedelia, a sort of Summer of Love song for this Winter of Discontent that we seem to be stumbling into, and “Floating Above the Water” sees them lean into the shimmering alt-pop that 10,000 Maniacs or Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians used to pull off effortlessly. It is an album as built on alt-rock solidity as on pastel pop dreamscapes. As much looking over its shoulder for inspiration as it is beating new musical paths into the future. It is simultaniously pop and rock, and indie. It is wilfully nostalgic and yet wonderfully exploratory. It is like nothing you have heard before, yet often reassuringly familiar. — bigtakeover





Track List:
01 - That Someone
02 - Someone's Party
03 - Apology Song
04 - Your Time Doesn't Exist
05 - A Family
06 - Don't You Wanna Try
07 - Floating Above the Water


Media Report:
Genre: art pop, indie-rock
Country: Montclair, New Jersey, USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


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