Album: Creatures

Artist: Elf Power

Record Label: Shifty Disco

Release Date: Out Now!

The Elephant 6 collective has been home to some fine bands in the past, but Elf Power are arguably the best of the bunch. ‘Creatures’ is their third UK album release and returns to the more pop based release ‘A Dream In Sound’, which is in my opinion one of the greatest albums to come out of America ever and luckily for me ‘Creatures’ follows on from that album more than the previous release ‘The Winter Is Coming’, which although contained some of Elf Power’s finest songs, it’s darker edge gave birth to some of the bands worse moments.

Those of you who have heard Elf Power will be aware that the band are the masters of the West Coast psychedelic-pop sound that has helped shape the scene over the Atlantic. The roots of their sound are based firmly in psychedelic-pop, but they branch out in several directions to help them orchestrate such a brilliant and fresh sound. It’s a well known fact Andrew Rieger’s lyrics border on a Lord Of The Rings and Dungeons & Dragons style, but this only goes to make their far more epic than they could ever hope for it to be.

With ‘Creatures’ the band seem to have travelled back in time and used instruments that give a somewhat a medieval and mystical feel to the album. With song titles like ‘Let The Serpent Sleep’ and ‘Palace Of The Flames’ it seems this is exactly what they were aiming for. Although the merry and spry tunes that appeared on ‘A Dream In Sound’ do appear on ‘Creatures’ in the shape of the pounding tune of ‘The Everlasting Scream’ and also on the pure 60’s-pop drive of ‘Things That Should Not Be’, the whole albums lacks the sheer depth of ‘A Dream In Sound’ that sucked you in.

‘Creatures’ seems to be something of a concept album or a story and although this adds to the grand sound that usually appears throughout Elf Power albums, the tunes aren’t as instantly likeable and don’t have that jaunty sing-along feel of previous releases. Nevertheless, Elf Power prove that they can still create unique sounding albums with the quality tunes to accompany this brave style. You’ll soon be donning a feathered hat and playing the loot after listening to this.

Richard Collings, 8/10