Elks – Sampler

In cultural terms, decades cast long shadows. Thank fuck that we’ve finally buried the 1990s and that the dour, Oasis-lite stylings of Kaiser Chiefs are the exception rather than the norm. Elks describe themselves on their MySpace site as “melodramatic popular song”, which is a very good sign. Across the nation, young bands aspire to drama, pretension and histrionics once more, which is entirely as it should be. Music as a celebration of riotous emotion and sense of possibility.
I think that Elks have the potential to be very popular indeed. By way of demonstration, I’m going to stab them right in the back and compare them to The Young Knives. There, I’ve said it. The Acorn’s driving rhythms, angular guitars, conversationally anguished vocals and tale of being at odds with the conventional world would sit completely comfortably on Voices Of Animals & Men, an album I like very much indeed. It’s a compliment, albeit not terribly imaginative of me.
“How do you suggest I make this right?” screams the vocalist in the final bars. Well, let’s have a listen to the rest of the tracks and see what can be done. What Hits The Ceiling is a little similar, though less frenetic and maybe not so confident in itself. Wide Avenues is much subtler, sung more melodically with widescreen harmonies soundtracking the bitter breakup of a relationship. When he sings “I’ve lost a lot of ground because I belong to you,” he sounds both wounded and vicious.
Four Heads For The Head Boys is a slower, more reflective live recording. It sounds as though it’s genuinely sung from the heart (“I am a symptom and you are a cure”) and it builds to a passionate, almost Flamenco-like crescendo. The standout track for me, however, is Bells. It’s an epic, beautiful tale of lost love, with immaculately structured peaks and troughs, unfolding its impressionistic lyrics (“You are, you will be, all the things you’ve hated, you hated in me”) at a measured pace.
To say that Elks only appear to have two singles under their belt to date, this is accomplished, sophisticated stuff. At the risk of going all Simon Cowell on you, I can definitely see a market for it. These five songs are accessible enough to appeal to a wide audience, whilst having enough substance and creativity to capture the hearts of music lovers looking for personality and individuality. What they need next is the break that gives them the chance to prove themselves.
http://www.myspace.com/elkstheband
This review also appears in issue 3 of DrunkenWerewolf magazine.