ELF POWER
CREATURES
SPIN ART
Like a corporate lawyer named Heather or Courtney, Elf Power has outgrown the cuteness of its name. On this fifth full-length, the silly carnival atmosphere that characterized the band's earlier releases has been replaced by darker fantasies: specters and demons, kings and vipers, voices and darkness, and always the sea—the patented symbol of the subterranean dream world, even if these rhymes read more like nightmares. But for all their eerie imagery, the songs are less than menacing—due to Andrew Rieger's harmless, almost listless vocals and arrangements that swing from cute-but-raunchy power pop to lilting lullabies. Demons with “fingers that claw through the dark” are somehow less ominous when accompanied by accordions, cellos and keyboards. Back-to-back gems “The Modern Mind” (a folk waltz?) and “Visions of the Sea” shimmer and sway, and only two tracks pose a threat to 10 p.m. noise curfews. There are a few times when things even seem to sag, as blandly familiar as pickup lines at the local watering hole. But unlike the desperate parasites at last call, these kids redeem themselves enough to pass muster as bedroom companions. That's the best place to mull over the true theme of the album: the idea that the creatures closing in are not threats of death but of life's memory slipping away, a fear that progresses throughout the album: “Where the ancient memories awake, don't let them fade,” Rieger sings. “Time is over, we're forgotten. . . . O, who will remember?” (Kristin Fiore)
