Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 23rd April
2020
Label: Holy Roar Records
“Habits” CD//DD//LP track listing:
1).
Wake.Repeat
2).
Sails
3).
Faceless
4).
Exit The Soul
5).
The Fall Chorus
6).
Bird
7).
Wasted
8).
Broken Nails
The Review:
Listening
to “Habits” in advance of its release has remind me of the first
time I heard Nirvana’s
“Nevermind”, knowing that I was about to lose one of my favourite
underground bands to the masses. A mix of joy and sadness pervades. On the one
hand I’ll be able to say I was there at the beginning, watching them play tiny
venues like The Unicorn in Camden or the Alma Inn in Bolton. On the other hand,
I now know they’ll shortly no longer be our little secret. I’ll now have to
share them with thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of others, because this
album is going to catapult them into the stratosphere.
Elephant Tree have taken their time
with this album. These seven songs have gestated during the four-year period
since their eponymous second release in 2016, with the band honing them on the
road and Riley Macintyre unleashing the multiple tools at his disposal at
Church studio in London (U2,
Paul McCartney, Radiohead). And boy does it tell. “Habits”
sounds like a hundred million dollars. We’re not just talking about just the
kitchen sink being in these grooves, they’ve fitted a whole house in there.
Musically, “Habits” is a five-course meal. It sounds like it was
recorded in a cathedral, or on a mountain top, and is musically uplifting and
wondrous.
Lyrically
we’re in polar opposite territory. This is one very dark record. Thematically
it touches on loss, regret, fucking up, self-loathing, depression, loneliness,
anxiety, paranoia, and the inevitability of death. Only “Bird”, with its
refrain of “soft wings brush the cloud up above, soaring high - welcome rays of
sun, fly, fly” offers any respite from the emotional murk and melancholy which
seeps from almost every word Pete (Holland, bass and vocals) or Jack (Townley,
guitar and vocals) sings.
A
sense of sadness and poignancy is there from the first line of “Sails”,
which follows introductory instrumental “Wake”: “So long, fading, don’t
leave me alone” Jack sings and you instantly want to give him a hug. Then they
springboard into far darker territory with the caustic “Faceless”
(“crawling the walls, sapping my soul…. vision tunnelled, fluorescent black
hole”). “Faceless” encapsulates all that is thrilling about Elephant Tree: a slow
burning build-up anchored by multi-part harmonies and Sam Hart’s simple hi-hat
shuffle, followed by a Jack Townley Dave Gilmour-esque guitar solo which will
set your spine a-tingling. But that’s just a starter for the main meal, which
comes in the second half of the song: the biggest, most head-noddingly savage
passage which sees the main riff gently, teasingly bend around a single note,
exploring either side of it before exploding into an almost orchestral,
heavenly crescendo of widescreen sonic musical blancmange before fading in a
drawn-out Krautrock keyboard drone. It is, quite simply, breathtakingly good.
“Exit
The Soul” explores reflections on living and dying, and how
we come to realise there’s an end point for all of us. It’s a seven-minute
ethereal epic which makes you feel like you’re bathing in sound, eventually erupting
into a palatial snail-pace drone and choir-of-angels Phil Spektor-eque wall of
sound. “The Fall Chorus” is an achingly beautiful acoustic-driven number
with harmonies and strings and Tow nley'sbest vocal yet. It brings to mind the
soundtrack to a spaghetti western starring Clint Eastwood, wide open plains and
the Rocky Mountains shimmering in the distance.
“Bird”
is the album’s money shot: a mid-tempo soaring chorus with monster harmonies is
the album’s high point and sole spirit-lifting moment. “Wasted” is a waltz about what goes
through your mind when you’re coming down after a massive bender (“I can’t
stand the way I destroy everything in me”), built around fat, grinding dirt-under-the-fingers-nails
guitar work from Townley.
The
album closes with “Broken Nails”, which is the best thing the band has
put its name to and hopefully an indication of where they’re headed next. It’s
a brave and unique song, starting with an acoustic guitar recorded so close to
the strings you can hear them scrape and slide, building via a passage of
clashing dissonance into a full-blown space opera. It sounds like no-one else,
takes a while to make sense, and leaves you wanting much more of it.
The
weight of expectation after their last album must have weighed heavily on Elephant Tree’s shoulders. They needed to
make a stunningly good record. They can rest easy in the realisation that
they’ve done exactly that. “Habits” is an exceptional piece of
work and an essential purchase. What a band they are. What an album this is.
Sheer sonic perfection.
