• Reviews

• All
• Music
• DVDs
• Live
• Cinema
• TV
• Books
• Comic Books
• Video Games

Jul 24, 2023 Web Exclusive By Frank Valish

Recorded in 1994 and released a year later, Vainly Clutching at Phantom Limbs was the debut album from Athens’ Elf Power. Most of the instruments were played by songwriter Andrew Rieger and recorded on his 4-track. Friends lent cello and guitar on one song, and drums on another, but other than that, Vainly Clutching at Phantom Limbs was Rieger’s baby, his first foray into a career that would span 14 albums and continue to this day. Orange Twin has now repressed the album onto vinyl, with an added bonus of the band’s 1996 EP, The Winter Hawk.

One might expect, given the circumstances of the recording and the youthfulness of the Elf Power project in general, that Vainly Clutching at Phantom Limbs might suffer from these factors in listening almost 30 years later. And it is true, that the album is lo-fi in comparison to Elf Power’s future works. Rieger acknowledges himself in a new essay featured in the liner notes that Elf Power’s debut was essentially a solo project of a songwriter finally able to get the ideas in his head down; he didn’t even have a true band yet.

What’s remarkable about listening to this album almost 30 years on is how fully formed the idea of Elf Power is. By the band’s sophomore release, 1997’s When the Red King Comes, Rieger had assembled a grouping of like-minded individuals to surround him and help flesh out his ideas, and as such, When the Red King Comes is an exponentially more expansive work. Elf Power was by then fully entrenched into the Elephant 6 Recording Company collective, with the incestuous interplay of musicians across bands and albums. But really the only difference is that Vainly Clutching at Phantom Limbs is more lo-fi, a fact that perhaps makes the album even more charming. Comprised of Rieger originals, along with a Dwarves cover (“Drug Store”) and a Robyn Hitchcock cover (the beguilingly fucked up take on “Surgery”), the album features all of the quasi-psychedelic feels and enchanting melodies that have characterized all of Elf Power’s best work. And despite the relative bedroom nature of the recordings, Rieger still manages to interject instruments such as organ and flute, the latter featuring in the hypnotic “Circular Malevolence.”

Even by the time of the stopgap The Winter Hawk EP, originally released between albums one and two, Rieger had expanded his surroundings, including other musicians playing drums, bass, violin, saxophone, flute, accordion, and synthesizer. But Vainly Clutching at Phantom Limbs is where it all started. It’s wonderful to have the album back in print on vinyl. And with the EP included as a 7”, it represents the definitive view of the beginnings of a songwriter and a band that would continue to satisfy for decades. (www.elfpower.com)

Author rating: 7.5/10