After nearly eight years of meandering, Elliott have finally settled on a defining principle that suits them-- this time, their muse is the grandiose abstraction, and Song in the Air, the band's third full-length since forming in Louisville in 1995, is packed full of half-truths and fuzzy sensations. Here, frontman Chris Higdon spouts mouthfuls of brow-furrowing lyrics ("Sold your broken wings for land and water/ Across the air and over waves/ You are the world/ You are the world repeating") over vague, omnipresent guitar washes and bulging strings, constantly building things and tugging them apart, keeping shit stubbornly inconclusive. Indefiniteness is its own kind of answer, and Elliott seem to have just now arrived at the proper end of their math equation.
Higdon is the only founding member of the band who has stuck around since the beginning, and each of Elliott's subsequent lineup changes might be partially accountable for their patchy discography, which ranges, inexplicably, from gratingly aggressive emo (1998's U.S. Songs) to dark, Cure-heavy noodling (2000's glossy False Cathedrals.) Song in the Air is Elliott's first record with new members Benny Clark on lead guitar and Jason Skaggs on bass, and it's considerably more celestial and defined than anything Higdon has spearheaded before: distorted guitar waves, wads of e-bow, violins, viola, splashes of piano, and thick, resonant percussion lead Song through lots of atmospheric swells and recesses. It's perfectly possible that Higdon's just now gotten around to unwrapping those Sigur Rós records he got for his birthday, or that Elliott's finally settled on a dominant aesthetic to accompany its new, steady lineup, but either way Song in the Air is a far more dynamic and internally cohesive record than any of the band's previous efforts.
Higdon's voice is always intensely engaging, even when it's been pushed back in the mix and coated with a layer of shimmering guitar: high, soaring, and perpetually unresolved, his coos are both human and oddly ethereal, possessed but hollow, sweet and sinister all at once. These sorts of weird, intimate contradictions are always captivating-- both on and off-record-- and Higdon's floaty howls, which seem capable of bending from comforting to wholly terrifying within a single note, lend Elliott's songs a kind of tingly intrigue.
Which is good, because the record's instrumentation is sorta old news by now: Elliott have taken some pretty obvious cues from post-post-rock bands like Elbow (and even hometown heroes and genre-definers Slint), and their heady stew is not exactly groundbreaking. Still, there are some effective moments: "Drag Like Pull", one of Song's two instrumental cuts, sees some jarring guitar detonations and eye-opening crashes; opener "Land and Water" has a big, echoing guitar riff that, despite waning quickly, can be sort of monumental in the right context.
A recent note on the band's website seems to suggest, albeit obliquely, that this might be Elliott's swan song ("To be true to what the band and its members have stood by.it's time for Elliott to come to an end") and Song in the Air seems like an awfully appropriate conclusion to a career based, seemingly, on a desperate search for self-definition.
