New Music: ELEL - Animal (Saint Motel Remix)

This is a bunch of firsts. It’s the first time I’ve featured a remix on the blog in a very long while. It’s also the first appearance of a lead male vocal on a track I've posted in over a month. It’s also the first time I’ve featured an ELEL song on the blog since I introduced them way back in May 2014 with the totally tropical carousel hit kicker of 40 Watt.

The fact that I haven’t written about ELEL in the last two years since introducing them reminds me of something Justin from The Vaccines once said in an interview with The Guardian a few years ago: “If you're being talked about before release and you don't have a record's worth of songs then you've fucking blown it before you've begun. And blogs in particular are to blame for that. Every day they have to post a new band. Are they still listening to the band they posted three weeks ago?” Well actually Justin, the answer to your question is yes. I still listen to your band, even though I haven’t written about you for years. Likewise ELEL. It’s a note of caution to all artists; don’t assume that because bloggers aren’t writing about you they’re not listening. Most music blogs aren’t full time jobs, they’re hobbies fitted around busy lives. That means our greatest limitation is time and we have to be very selective about what we write about. We simply can't cover everything.

And besides, Justin was wrong. There are many examples of acts that have transitioned from a handful of demos written about by blogs to quality albums a couple of years later. For example the likes of Lapsley and Shura have recently followed this route. 

So back to ELEL. Recent single Animal was a big out of the box slice of feel-good pop, one that sat in my ‘to write about’ file for quite some time and never quite got out again. So now I can make amends for the internet version of 'gathering dust' by posting this remix (from Saint Motel) which fine tunes the track with some warm electronic wizardry, sounding a bit like what a rainbow would sound like, if rainbows made sounds. There’s an album coming via Mom + Pop Music soon as well, which rest assured even if I don’t mention ELEL on the blog for another two years, I will be listening to.

ELEL - Animal (Saint Motel Remix)

ELEL - New Waves

It’s very hard to write about 8 piece Nashville newcomers ELEL and their song 40 Watt without making some sort of lightbulb / power reference (after all the lyrics do so) but honestly this song is a real musical turn on that will brighten up your day (sorry). Described to us as ‘like early MGMT dusted with some Vampire Weekend’, 40 Watt is the sound of jumping on a psychedelic carousel and taking a spin into a world of multi-layered vocals, tropical steel pans and thumping drums. It has a real breadth of sonic vision. This is pop, but it’s not the sort of pop that we’d ever expect Katy Perry or Miley Cyrus to make (although all credit to them if they did). In fact 40 Watt bears similarities to a band like New York’s Cults, but with an extra kaleidoscopic twist.

The band’s debut release Geode is due to be released next month and 40 Watt is a taster of what to expect from that. If the rest of it matches the sparks-will-fly excellence of this tune then we’ll have a rather good record in our ears soon.

ELEL - 40 Watt