Creatures
Creaturesis Elf Power’s fifth full-length and most streamlined release. The Athens, Georgia, quartet has long boasted a depth that seems to elude many of their cohorts in the Elephant Six collective. Earlier releases served notice of their ambitions: nothing less than head-on ‘60s garage rock and psychedelia cross-bred with ‘70s glam and power pop and brought into line with vocalist Andrew Rieger’s lyrical obsessions. OnCreaturesthese ambitions finally congeal into a seamless mesh of pop craft and imaginative flight. Rieger’s Brothers Grimm-type serpents and castles typically serve as both psychedelically inspired dream images as well as archetypal caricatures representing the absurdities of modern life. And here, the lyrics are married to the band’s most visceral music to date. The cellos that underpin "The Unseen Hand" or the unfettered guitars propelling "Everlasting Scream," for example, subtly underscore the substance of the songs (whose themes of foreboding and release interplay more than ever) without ever sounding merely ornamental.--Michael Velez