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Jun 08, 2022 By Mark Redfern

Elf Power are releasing their first new album in five years, Artificial Countrysides, on July 15 via Yep Roc. Now they have shared the album’s fourth single, “Soft Trash,” via a video. Eric Harris directed the video. Watch it below, followed by the band’s upcoming tour dates.

“‘Soft Trash’ originated from recording a samba drum machine beat from a 1970s Baldwin Fun Machine organ, an instrument renowned for its cool and bizarre sounding drum machine keyboard sounds,” explains Elf Power’s singer/multi-instrumentalist Andrew Rieger in a press release. “I fell in love with this organ/drum machine in the 1990s when our friends in the band Macha (featuring Josh McKay, later of Deerhunter) used it a lot on several of their great albums. I finally acquired a Fun Machine when we started working on our latest album Artificial Countrysides, and it made it onto several of the songs on the album. On ‘Soft Trash,’ I liked the beat so much that I recorded it first and then wrote the chords, melody and lyrics around the drum machine beat, and then our drummer Peter Alvanos doubled the drum machine on real drums, making a nice mix or organic and artificial elements, which became a recurring theme on many of the songs on the album.”

Artificial Countrysides includes “The Gas Inside the Tank,” a new song the band shared in February. When the album was announced in April they shared its second single, “Undigested Parts.” Then in May they shared its third single, title track “Artificial Countrysides.”

The album is the band’s 14th and the follow-up to 2017’s Twitching in Time. As welll as Rieger, Artificial Countrysides features contributions from drummer Peter Alvanos, guitarist Dave Wrathgabar, and keyboard player Laura Carter.

“I like the challenge of approaching it as a trial-and-error process, so we can spend more time and see what works and what doesn’t,” Rieger said of recording the album in a previous press release. “We build the songs as we’re coming up with them, instead of rehearsing it to death and then recording it. I’ve always felt like that makes for more interesting music for us.”

The press release said Artificial Countrysides “centers around the gray zones where the natural world collides with the creeping encroachment of the digital realm, where the balance between real and simulated can shift from one minute to the next.”

Rieger further explained: “That title also describes the songwriting process, of world-building or creating an artificial landscape within a song.”

Elf Power Tour Dates with E.R. Jurken:

7/13: Milwaukee, WI - Shank Hall
7/14: Chicago, IL - Schubas Tavern
7/15: Louisville, KY - Portland Creative Compound
7/16: Detroit, MI - El Club
7/17: Cincinnati, OH - MOTR Pub
7/18: Columbus, OH - Natalie’s Grandview
7/19: Pittsburgh, PA - Club Cafe
7/20: Millersville, PA - Phantom Power
7/21: Somerville, MA - Crystal Ballroom
7/22: Providence, RI - Columbus Theatre
7/23: New York, NY - LPR
7/24: Hamden, CT - Space Ballroom
7/25: Philadelphia, PA - Johnny Brenda’s
7/26: Washington, D.C. - Black Cat
7/27: Carrboro, NC - Cat’s Cradle (Back Room)
7/28: Columbia, SC - New Brookland Tavern
7/29: Atlanta, GA - 529
7/30: Athens, GA - 40 Watt

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