For some bands, an EP is simply an appetizer for the eventual full-length-- one or two examples of their best material, some filler, and maybe a cover tune thrown in to give listeners a ready-made reference point. But for other bands, the EP provides a perfect dose of what they have to offer. New York's Elk City fit in the latter category. Their music, while lush and often captivating, gets tiring over the long haul. The trio's debut, for example, 2000's Status, contained many memorable highlights, but as a whole, it overstayed its welcome with too many similarly paced songs.
The Sea is Fierce, a new five song EP, is much more flattering to the band's blend of urban psych-folk. Guitar, drums, and various keyboards (especially Rhodes) combine to create a mood similar to Galaxie 500, Low, or Cowboy Junkies, but more willing to take the BPM count up a few notches on occasion. The vocal duties are pretty evenly split between Peter Langland-Hassan, who also plays guitar, and Reneé LoBue, who handles most of the keyboard work. This dynamic between male and female singers, when utilized in the same song, creates a vague tension and uneasiness. But then, you get the feeling this isn't being used to its full potential: the lyrics are often just too cloudy to pull it off.
The first thing you hear on this EP is the fiery guitar workout by Langland-Hassan which opens "Take Me Out," sounding incredibly similar to the theme from "Kids in the Hall" (only much grittier), and the rest of the band rocks out following his lead. But by the one-minute mark, their meds kick in-- either that, or they're all submerged in some kind of super-viscous fluid, slowing things to a sludgy crawl. This is when LoBue's sultry moan, sounding not unlike ex-Mazzy Star singer Hope Sandoval or Over the Rhine's Karin Bergquist, enters: melancholy, hypnotic, and above all, nocturnal. The lyrics take a backseat to the singing, though-- something about how "the state I'm in is not my state of mind," and how her brother likes the Who and the Kinks-- along with distorted, reverb-soaked vocal interjections by her counterpart. It's all a little unclear. Elk City is all about mood and atmospherics; if you're looking for narrative, look elsewhere.
After about four minutes, Langland-Hassan gets bored and decides his guitar needs to take over again, stomping on the distortion pedal and going for guitar-god status. This goes on for about four more minutes (which means we're nearing the nine minute-mark here with this opening song, for those of you not keeping score). And I said this band was better in small portions, right? Well, right. Thankfully, they only pull this kind of thing once on The Sea is Fierce. But the solo actually isn't that bad. Far from gratuitous or over-indulgent, it actually hangs around only as long as it needs to. Listening to it, I could finally kind of hear the link between Peter Buck's concise college rock riffs and the near-eternal distortion sculptures Neil Young creates in concert.
With "Turpentine," the chairs are switched: Langland-Hassan takes the lead vocal seat and LoBue provides a refrain of sorts. Essentially, it's an organ-driven come-down number with a much more sober and shorter guitar solo bridge. Langland-Hassan's voice, when unaltered by effects, comes awfully close to sounding like a Tom Verlaine imitation (not that this is a bad thing). This is best heard on the upbeat, almost pop-punkish "Three Ears," which paradoxically sees the band come closest to throwing off the shackles of their combined influences. There's one particular line in the song ("big tits are never enough") that seems out of place and threatens to derail the whole thing, but taken in context, it's not really all that bad.
A cover of Galaxie 500's "Strange" from their 1989 classic, On Fire, comes next. It's always a little disappointing when a band covers a song by an glaringly obvious influence-- it just seems like they're not trying-- but Elk City stamp this one with enough personality to let it slide. "Bar Song" finishes off the EP with a modernist take on the nineteenth century sea chantey, with very Mercury Rev-esque singing-saw accompaniment courtesy of the Music Tapes' Julian Koster.
The whole thing is over in about 25 minutes, which is just about right. It's hard to see how Elk City could sustain a listener's interest for much longer than this without significant additions to either their musical or lyrical vocabulary. They've got a few promising tools at their disposal: a great guitarist (with maybe a slight tendency to wank, but properly harnessed, it could be used for the Forces of Good) and two distinctive vocalists. But these seductions are short-lived, and once you've settled into the band's sound, there's not much else to keep you occupied. The key ingredient they're missing, and what separates them for the time being from, say, Low, is that elusive quintessence: strong songwriting.
