Elk City
New Believers
Friendly Fire Recordings
By Doug Wallen
Not many folks remember Renee LoBue and Ray Ketchem’s 1990s outfit, the Melting Hopefuls, and for a while it seemed like their next band, Elk City, was doomed to follow suit. Yet New Believers finds them in a better place, despite lineup tinkering and only cult adoration for their first two albums. They’re on a new label and have new members with definite credentials – ex-Luna guitarist Sean Eden (famous in some circles) and ex-Lovelies bassist Barbara Endes.
The teamwork of frontwoman LoBue and drummer/producer Ketchem is along the same lines as Spoon’s core of Britt Daniel and Jim Eno. Where Spoon strips songs down to the barest essentials, Elk City drenches them in sumptuous layers of embellishment. The best Elk City songs – like “Take Me Out,” the stormy nine-minute opener of their high-water-mark The Sea Is Fierce EP – have paired languid strains of folk and pop with monster guitar passages and syrupy shoegaze.
New Believers keeps this up, spiking the tiptoed “Silver Lawyers” with guitar worthy of Television, and so the new-model Elk City somehow sounds more like itself than ever, despite shedding moods and genres at every turn. “You Got Me,” all jerky saloon-style piano and odd detours, summons Bitter Tea-era Fiery Furnaces and leads into the dusky organ and faint drum-machine beat of “My Type of Criminal,” akin to the quieter entries of Yo La Tengo and Cowboy Junkies.
Trippy riffing opens “White Walls,” lyrics hinting at the confines of an asylum: “White walls won’t tell me I’m no good / White walls, they never talk back to me.” It’s good, but so much better is “Totally Free,” burnt at the edges with bluesy psych. Seductively fuzzy, it smuggles in the album’s strongest chorus, practically demanding blog attention in the process. It’s their best song since “Take Me Out” and manages to sound nothing like it.
As many will point out, LoBue’s vocals are the star attraction of Elk City, at least at first. She’s got a growl tempered with sultry affection and well-deserved self-confidence: her delivery can feel like a remnant of last-decade alt-rock, recalling Belly or Magnapop. There are some cheesy moments, but mighty tempests of instrumental textures and emotion always arrive to restore the balance. After all, the band loves showy guitar and commanding vocals even while indulging in dreamy effects and incidental drifting.
Such contradictions may be the secret to Elk City’s slept-on status. But there’s a giddy sense of energy and ambition to everything they do, and despite its many moods, New Believers is the clearest document yet of their unusual sound.
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