Elliott, how I miss you dearly.
Every time I listen to their debut album False Cathedrals, I’m reminded of how absent subtlety and majesty are in modern music. The waves of sound crash and fall and envelope me, like a warm blanket on a windy day. The vocals float on these waves, flowing in and out of coherence, but always bolstered by angular and muscular guitar theatrics.
And this music is nothing if not cinematic. Each song is presented like a tapestry of emotion, stories that are painted in the nooks and crannies of the explosive choruses and hauntingly beautiful verse passages. The drums are always driving, moving, changing, keeping the tension at a level that can drop off and suddenly snap back into high-gear. This is music made with passion and with vision. False Cathedrals remains untouched by the cookie-cutter imitation process, being that it was released in the small period of time while expressive indie rock music was gaining momentum, but hadn’t become the newest bandwagon (pun intended) to jump on. Where others seem contrived and lack the sincerity and conviction to be pushing genre boundaries, Elliott fearlessly chart new territory without having to show off or pretentiously alienate fans. The music is deceptively simple on the surface; built on a familiar canvas of arpeggios and loud/soft dynamic shifts, but it’s so much more than that. Elliot realize the importance of being more than the sum of it’s parts, and infuse that ideology into every crevice of False Cathedrals; an album that is so rich with raw sentiment and impassioned playing that it’s easy to get lost in it’s dissonance. It’s the kind of record that deserves to be called majestic.
The only trouble with an album being as consistent and inspiringly innovative as False Cathedrals is that a band with this kind of sensibility can’t last forever. Music as moving and completely engrossing as this cannot be pumped out over and over again. Eventually, it needs to stand as a reflection of honesty and integrity; to be left in the past as a guide for those who will pick up the torch and continue the legacy of creating music for creativity’s sake. Elliott may have broken up, but they left us with an album that is as engrossing and heart-wrenching as your favourite cinematic masterpiece. And it stands up just as well to repeated spins.
Calvary Song (Track 5)
05 Calvary Song by timpozzi
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