Elf Power’s lyrics paint vivid mental pictures through oblique references to made-up mythological creatures, magic powers and the visions of seers. So no drugs here then. Andrew Rieger talks about psychedelia, spirituality and the new album ‘Creatures’
29/04/2002
ATHENS, GEORGIA—land of pecans and blooming dogwoods. A land the local chamber of commerce calls the “closest place to Heaven on Earth.” Fifty miles northeast of Atlanta and 600 feet above sea level, the little college town that spawned such legendary acts as the B-52’s, R.E.M., Pylon, Guadalcanal Diary and The Olivia Tremor Control has another name to add to its list of famous artistes: Elf Power.
While the name might not have the same rolls-right-off-the-tongue quality of, say, fellow Athenians, Juicifer, the band makes up for it by combining strummy acoustic guitars, plaintive organs and guitarist Andrew Rieger’s gloriously adenoidal vocals with bubblegum melodies pillaged from Buddha Records’ glory days.
Formed by Rieger and fellow University of Georgia at Athens classmate, Laura Carter, in 1993, the pair pressed 12 songs of lo-fi surreality recorded on a cassette four-track into vinyl and gave away 50 LPs to friends. The friends flipped over the mystically absurd Vainly Clutching at Phantom Limbs (Arena Rock) and Rieger and Carter realized they had a band on their hands. Now, eight years later, the band that was never meant to be is set to release its fifth record and go on a big tour of Europe, Japan and the States, but like many of the band’s songs, Rieger sounds neither excited nor surprised. More than likely, it’s just Rieger’s laid-back southern disposition coming through. However, he did say Creatures (SpinArt) is the band’s most accomplished album so far, so it’s not as if he’s completely ambivalent about its success.
“This album is my favorite,” the Greenwood, S.C. native said from his home in Athens. “But most of them usually are when we’re done with them. I’d be disappointed if it weren’t. It’s a little more direct musically and lyrically and a little bit catchier, and I like that about it. I don’t know if it’s a conscious thing, but once it was done, I definitely noticed that was the case.”
Perhaps it’s because the band went back to its home recording roots for this album. Or maybe it’s because Gland’s bassist Neil Golden joined the group. Or maybe it’s because after six years the core of the band has been together long enough to really jell. Whatever the case, Rieger says he’s happy with the results. “This one was a lot easier to record than any of the ones in the past,” admitted Rieger. “With our new bass player, if I thought I could do something better I’d punch in and change it. That was a cool way to do it because our old bass player kind of had his parts and he had them set, so we couldn’t elaborate on them.”
With a little more freedom to experiment and growing confidence in the studio, Rieger and Co. were able to apply the knowledge they gained over the last few years towards recording a more direct-sounding album. Rather than burying melodies under layers of icing, Rieger said he and his bandmates focused on getting each song across as directly as possible.
“One problem we’ve always had with some of our earlier recordings is that we tend to throw so much other stuff on the top that sometimes the drums get lost,” said Rieger. “I think we consciously tried to be a little more minimal this time. Like, the last album we recorded over a nine-month period at home and in the studio, and we had lots of time to try different things and experiment. This time we rehearsed all the songs and then we recorded them basically with the arrangements we rehearsed. It makes the songs more direct and simple.”
For Creatures, Rieger said he wrote most of the material at home on his acoustic and recorded the basic tracks to his Fostex T-88 digital eight-track then transferred the tracks to tape at the studio to warm up the recording’s cold digital sound. After spending a couple of weeks developing vocal melodies and fooling around with the lyrics, Rieger got the band together to write their own parts and help arrange the songs. However, it hasn’t always been done that way, he said.
On the first album, the songs were written as they were recorded. For the next two releases—the Winterhawk EP and When the Red King Comes—the band used a mixed approach where they vacillated between making up the songs as they went and rehearsing songs religiously before drastically changing them in the studio.
The band’s third release, A Dream in Sound, employed producer Dave Fridmann’s expertise (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev) in order to get a bigger rock sound. However, because it was recorded over an extended period of time with numerous breaks in between, Rieger said the band had a lot of opportunity to tinker with arrangements, which ultimately ended up changing many of the songs.
When it was time for the Winter is Coming sessions in the spring and summer of 2000, the group decided to go back to straight up home recording, which yielded yet another crowded-sounding record, albeit a gem. So for Creatures, Rieger said he wanted to cultivate a more direct, less layered sound, which led the band to hook up with friend and engineer, Andy Baker (Japancakes, Juicifer, Shannon Wright), at his home studio in Athens.
With Baker now at the board and a new appreciation for restraint, Elf Power have created a disc of blithely blissed out tunes as sunny and inviting as honeysuckle on the vine and as dark as a summertime rain cloud. “The Creature,” with its minor-key melody and hushed vocal delivery ploughed under by Doug Stanley’s (Glands) bubbly pedal steel solo at precisely 1:47, is a perfect example of how both styles can happily coexist.
Unlike some of the band’s friends and collaborators linked to the Elephant 6 collective (a loose coalition of psychedelically oriented bands clearly influenced by the Beatles and the Beach Boys) Elf Power tends to use the darker elements of the Velvet Underground, T. Rex and Neil Young’s styles as its muse. Whatever similarities to fellow E6 alumni the Apples (in Stereo) or The Olivia Tremor Control they might bear, Rieger said he doesn’t think his band’s music is really all that psychedelic.
“It depends on what you define as psychedelic,” Rieger explained. “A lot of people think of the Grateful Dead or Phish playing some ten-minute blues jam, and that to me is not psychedelic. To me psychedelic is “Tomorrow Never Knows” by The Beatles where it sounds like some sea gull from another dimension or something coming in and ripping your head off, that’s the kind of psychedelia that we strive for.”
Psychedelic or not, Elf Power’s lyrics paint vivid mental pictures through oblique references to made-up mythological creatures, magic powers and the visions of seers. Though few of Rieger’s songs rely on a strict linear narrative, he said the sentiments they contain are generally the same: peace, love and spiritual understanding. For instance, on the current album Rieger said the word creatures is really just a metaphor for the natural spirits he says all humans used to be in touch with.
“There’s a lot of mention of creatures on this album, but the creatures aren’t really meant to be thought of like little animals but more like natural spirits,” suggested Rieger. “Another way to put it is that mankind used to be more in touch with its natural side and as materialism has slowly dominated our cultures over the last few centuries and put the part of our brain that deals with spiritual things to sleep, we’ve lost touch with those creatures. It sounds a little New Age and hokey, but that’s not where we’re coming from at all.”
Of course, given a shot, Elf Power’s happy, vaguely euphoric pop sound might win over a few self-described bodhisattvas. In the meantime, though, the band is preparing to hit the road in May, when it will be bringing its show to the west coast, Texas and Chicago, followed by festival dates in Europe in August, an east coast tour in the fall and Japanese dates in the winter.
Though nothing is set in stone yet, Rieger said one thing is for sure. After opening up for so many bigger bands in the past, Elf Power will definitely be the headliner on this tour. (Perhaps that will leave more time at the end of the show to bust out some of its heartfelt but haggard versions of Brian Eno‘s “Needle in the Camel’s Eye,” David Bowie’s “Queen Bitch,” the Stooges “I Wanna Be Your Dog” or the Velvet Underground’s “What Goes On”. “You know, the masters,” Rieger said.)
But even if Athens never does build a shrine to its local pop artists, Elf Power can rest assured thousands of aficionados of the lo-fi recording aesthetic found on its first album, not to mention several thousand record collector types, will go on loving them till their dying days. Besides, it was all a lark anyway.
“We didn’t know anything in the beginning,” recalled Rieger. “We weren’t a real band and we didn’t think anybody would really be interested in putting our music out. We just did it ourselves for fun.”
Allan Kemler for Crud Magazine© 2002