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Sep 30, 2013 Issue #47 - September/October 2013 - MGMT By Frank Valish

Elf Power has been creating intricate, melodic, insightful indie-pop for so long now that the occasion of a new album is simply another opportunity to bask in all the things the band has been so good at since starting as a bit player in the Elephant 6 scene in the mid-‘90s. The band’s last album, 2010’s self-titled release, was a mostly subdued tribute to recently departed friend, Vic Chesnutt, and this one, the band’s 11th, features much of the same in terms of tone. “Grotesquely Born Anew,” perhaps the album’s best song (and certainly its best song title), features a perfectly lullaby-like melody surrounded by swirling, Eastern-flavored string sounds. “Things Lost” follows on the same road with a simple strummed acoustic guitar, piano textures, and beautiful vocals. A couple left turns are thrown in for good measure—the occasional noise and sound of a baby crying on “Lift the Shell,” the off-key horn-sounding instrument on “Darkest Wave.” The songs tend to segue into one another and most, like the best Guided By Voices tracks, seem to end too soon. But Sunlight on the Moon is not an album that will hit you over the head with its immediacy. Its pleasures—delicate arrangements, gently pleasing vocals, insightful and introspective lyrics, wondrous tunefulness throughout—are subtle, and they reveal themselves in each listen. (www.elfpower.com)

Author rating: 6.5/10