Caught in the Carousel

Elf Power

In A Cave
Ryko

On their somewhat psychedelic release In A Cave Elf Power are craftier than they claim to be. The fairly fuzzy Athens, GA band bill themselves as lo-fi, but with six band members, there's too much going on for their sound to simply be a result of cheap production. Given their careful use of feedback and fuzz, they are clearly in control of the "flaws" characteristic of the lo-fi genre. In A Cave has the kind of sound that will likely provoke one of two listener responses: a compulsion to fix the intentional errors, or an appreciation of the way in which the distortions come together.

The album opens full-force with "Owl Cut (White Flowers in the Sky"), inundating the listener with a short tidal succession: eight wave cycles of just-slightly-fuzzed synth. It's distorted enough to be irritating to those preferring polished musical products, but
underneath the distortion is a hint of... oh... could it be sampling? Every time the track kicks off, there's just enough hinting at Depeche Mode's "I Feel You" in the synth progression to suggest that the distortion is actually carefully crafted. This becomes a pattern in other songs as the album progresses. Though not all of the sonic components dovetail, the music is carefully disarranged: the listener can almost hear the deliberateness hiding behind the songs' more jagged corners.

Now for the bad news: though the songs as individual units are carefully arranged, the album's track progression isn't. In A Cave feels more like a talent show than a mood piece: it's like Elf Power are trying a little too hard to prove their versatility. As a result, they're all over the place: on the first half of the album, In A Cave gradually moves out of synth sounds into more acoustically-based, prettier tracks. Then, with "Spiral Stairs," the band starts with a base of rough, rhythmic synth and then layers melodic organ over it. On "A Tired Army," the distortion gets slower, to the point where it feels almost percocet-induced. By the album's sixth track, "Softly Through the Void," the band proves they know how to apply lo-fi tactics to melodic pop—here, they sound almost Beatles-esque.

The second half of the album goes on to waver between drawn-out distorted tracks ("Window to Mars"), pop tracks ("The New Mythology"), and sweeter ballads. Some of the songwriting is amazing—lyrically, "The Demon's Daughter" could well be the Anne Sexton's Transformations of indie rock—but by and large, the transitions between songs lack the intuition characteristic of a great album. On a great album, the last track teaches you to expect the next; on In A Cave, the music is memorable at times, but strictly on a track-by-track basis.

—Christine Fort