“I drank every day and people were crazy…BBQ! BBQ! BBQ!” – Elephant Gym, in response to the question “how was Austin”
Last National Poetry Month, we close read some poems. Recently, I’ve been looking at albums I loved in high school. The most recent crop of those turned a little shame-filled and maybe mean. So I thought it might be nice to close-read some songs I really like. Talk about why I think they are cool.
Breaking this into sub-categories—it worked at Cracked, it works for The Line Break, and it’s a good way to organize thoughts. Most chord progressions are four chords, so we’ll do four categories: general vibe, structure, chords, and moments of sublime. Those all make sense at face value right? Thanks, readers, I knew I could trust you.
First up was Chon. Then we did Polyphia. Now let’s do Elephant Gym.
General Vibe
Yeah, I went with the live version—mostly because they’re a great live band and this show at Audiotree rocks. These songs, like a great many of Elephant Gym songs, make me feel like I’m walking at night in a city. Thinking real hard about something. I’m leaving a night class when I listen to Elephant Gym—one of the good ones, like a writing workshop or something. There’s also this vibe with Elephant Gym—Brendan said “it feels like they have unlimited creativity” or something to that affect once. That’s correct. They groove, they play technical, they get dynamic, they go wherever they feel like going. This is a band who knows how to make a pop song but would find it boring, a band who wants to rock hard but thinks playing too loud is obnoxious, a band who is classically trained but hates practice. They just kinda do whatever cool shit they think of, and what comes out is incredibly interesting and fun.
Structure
“Head” is a bass etude that leads into “Body” (it’s like this way on the album, too). While KT is an incredibly skilled bass player who can tap and slap/pop and walk and play classical, she’s also a tasteful songwriter. Notice there aren’t any of those fancy techniques in “Head.” When “Body” starts, she starts tapping. Sure. But that’s in service of the “chaos notes falling from the sky” feeling of the A part. It’s Tell’s piano holding the song down. Playing chords in the A part. Then playing the drone note when we get to the B section. Then back to chords while KT is playing countermelody (to Tell’s right hand) in the C part. They go back to the A part to tie it all together, and we’ve got a nice little three-act structure for this song.
Chords
Unlike “Waterslide” and “Playing God,” I don’t have the faintest idea how to play these songs (“Head” is in the key of A, that’s all I got). Sitting down and trying to figure out at least some of this is a goal, and I think I’m a decent enough piano player to pick it out. Not a good enough piano for that to be an easy task, though.
So what I can comment on is this: a lot of these chords are super close together, and the bass is often playing in a similar register as the piano. That contributes to the “notes falling out of the sky” feeling, as do the dissonant chords (I’m guessing a few minor 9ths in there, and some sustained four chords—both chords where it’s easy to play very close notes on a piano). These songs are controlled, tightly mapped chaos, and the way these instruments interact with each other takes up an impressive amount of sonic space.
Moments of Sublime
“Head” is the exact right length of time.
The not quite-scale-in-thirds walkdown that leads right to the downbeat of “Body.”
The first piano chords of “Body.”
Chia-Chin’s decision to stay off the drums from 12:08-12:19, then have sporadic offbeat snare for the rest of that riff.
Chia-Chin’s fills. He might have my favorite fills of anybody playing drums right now, I’m not sure.
The drone note part feels so big and building and makes my chest swell but it never feels corny or Evangelical or otherwise manipulative. Like most stuff Elephant Gym does, to me, it reads like simply a cool thing to do as a band.
Whatever dissonant departure from the root note KT makes at 14:25. I think it’s an F# while Tell is playing a chord based around a G? Again, I don’t know how to play this song. But she goes lower than he does, and the half-step dissonance somehow works in a way that makes me close my eyes every time I hear it.
The halftime breakdown at 14:54.
The return to the A riff at the end has such a feeling of return to it, like how every TV show episode is supposed to end with the characters “returning home having changed”—that’s how that riff feels.
WRAP IT UP B
This video was my first introduction to Elephant Gym. I liked them right away, but these two songs cemented me liking this band. These two songs are the kind of songs that make me go “I wanna do that too!” Yeah, sometimes I see a band and get like a five-year-old when a different five-year-old discovers the bubble wand you thought you hid better in your garage. We need more three-piece piano-drum-bass combos dedicated to doing weird shit like this.
This song rips.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris