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Elliott
By Ravis Harnell
When grilled about the mechanics behind his band’s lush, multitextured sonics, Elliott frontman Chris Higdon is self-effacing, and quick to sing the praises of this Louisville, Kentucky-based quartet’s collaborative dynamic.
“It’s been a real struggle for me to consider myself a musician. I can only really play what I play. They can probably pull off different styles, and I think sometimes they play down to my level,” he laughs. “A lot of times someone will come in with a skeleton of something, and everyone will pile their parts onto it. Lately, we’ll come in with more solid ideas. Kevin [Ratterman, drummer] might have a song fairly completed, or Jay [Palumbo, guitarist], or I might, and then we’ll come in and we’ll really just play for the good of the song. I think with past records and other bands, sometimes there was so much going on, and everyone was playing for themselves…we really try to concentrate on playing for the song. Instead of making our individual parts interesting or chaotic, we try to make the whole song really interesting, as a group effort.”
While Elliott’s rich congregation of personalities and eclectic influences are doubtlessly key factors in creating their standout postpunk sound, it’s often Higdon’s soaring, ethereal vocal style and knack for insinuating uncommon melody that listeners and critics home in on, though he views his position as frontman and lyricist as no more or less than a quarter of the whole.
“Any time you get into writing and working with other people, you kind of have to let your ego go and realize that what you’re doing isn’t particularly just for you, it’s for everybody. If I came up and was doing my thing, and Jay and Jonathan [Mobley, bassist] and Kevin didn’t put their two cents into it, it just wouldn’t come out the same, and definitely wouldn’t be Elliott, and I don’t think it would be nearly as good as what we come up with [together]. The combination of our different influences is what makes us sound the way we sound, and not exactly like something else,” he affirms.
Last year’s critically-lauded US Songs, released by uberreputable West Coast indie label Revelation, assimilated the components of urgent after-the-hardcore music unlike, and perhaps better than, any other outfit currently mining the outer edges of the ‘emo’ tag. The album is a sprawling emotional trip which disregards convention in favor of instinct, iconoclastic in execution yet universal in its ability to relate, largely thanks to Higdon’s ambiguous, multifaceted lyrics (wherein virtually anyone can find a personal point of reference) and the band’s explosive, anthemic vibe.
“When you say anthem, yeah, a lot of the stuff has that feeling to it,” agrees Higdon. “You celebrate within it, but everything is good is gonna have some kind of opposite side to it. You’re always gonna have to deal with the good and the bad, and you usually have to deal with it all at the same time. That’s kind of a strong subject with me, the kind of yin and yang, so to speak, the good and evil of every situation.”
A year of touring found the band experimenting and honing their live set, incorporating more loops and sampled instrumentation into the material, and segueing from song to song with short, moody, classically-structured snippets, enhancing their already-atmospheric sound. Those who caught the show were treated to a palpable sense of Elliott’s ongoing evolution, of being a part of the story; both the band’s devoted fanbase and anticipation of the next full-length grew exponentially.
The band’s new Initial Records release, If They Do… (Revelation is releasing a companion seven-inch single, …Will You?, consisting of one new track, ‘The Calvary Song’, and a cover of obscure British outfit The Chameleons’ ‘Fan In The Bellows’), is not that full-length, but rather a six-song offering spanning Elliott’s recorded output thus far. Comprised of the two songs from their first single, In Transit, an acoustic reworking of one of those songs, ‘Halfway Pretty’, a never-released instrumental track, and two new tunes, If They Do… is intended as both a way to provide previously vinyl-only material in the digital format and as a transition to the group’s next creative phase. The pair of new songs share the emotional release and uncommon arrangements of US Songs, representing a logical progression while hinting at changes to come.
“Those songs were songs that were written almost immediately after US Songs. What we wanted to do was get all the songs that were kind of from that era out before we have this new full-length that we just finished come out,” Higdon explains, adding that the developments in Elliott’s live show played a role in constructing the new record:
“We didn’t do exactly what we do live, but I think it takes some of the extra instrumentation and places it in the songs themselves, instead of having straight rock songs, and loops and instruments in between, and then another song, you’ve got these songs where everything is combined.”
While waiting for the new full-length, titled False Cathedrals, to drop, Elliott are hitting the road again for a couple of weeks, in order to work out the new material in a live setting, as well as to discover together what the next step in the foursome’s development will be. According to Higdon, that’s the whole point.
“I don’t feel constrained about what I can sing or talk about, or what the band really means. If we wanted to do a full instrumental album, we would just do it, we wouldn’t really think about it too much. It’s definitely open-ended, where we can do whatever we want, and that allows me just to feel good about it.”
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