Elephants - 'Music Machine'/'Jesus' (Paper)

The Elephants are an already-forgotten band from Kentucky that lived in the world of melodic guitar pop, though without much notable influence from the Elephant 6/Apples in Stereo gang that shared the stage with them. 'Music Machine' is a bouncing, bright song with lots of space, and a vocal melody that isn't easy to compare to. But it's the B-side, the somber 'Jesus', which is chilling - singer Jason Zavala's investigation of a personal relationship that is somehow fragile, tender and honest despite the subject matter and the 'ba ba ba ba' vocal bit. His voice has a complexity and dynamic that's deliberately underplayed, until the last movement comes along and it gets dangerously "emo" -- yet the overall aesthetic of the Elephants is so far from that, we're spared any clichés. The liner notes include a website address which seems to be for a music shop in California, so I'm impressed by the lack of Internet presence for a band this recent.

Chisel - 'It's Alright, You're OK/The Guns of Merdian Hill' (Gern Blandsten)

Ten months without a post!  Sorry about this corner of our little alphabetical world - somehow 7"s get overlooked and I tend to do them in batches.  We left off with Chisel last year and pick it up with a 7" that might actually belong chronologically before 'The O.T.S.'.  Post-8 AM All Day Chisel never did much for me, apart from a few songs here and there. 'It's Alright, You're OK' feels like a tune with a bit more pop chart potential than anything before. Leo's voice has always been high in the mix, and there's a lot less guitar scrapings, instead being driven by a bouncing bassline and an organ-swirl chorus. That said it's a lot less 'heavy' and the traces of 'punk' are removed in favour of a more feel-good, soulful mod pop. I like this song a lot, but you have no idea how many times I listened to it in high school. The b-side is a song that for some reason I always thought was a cover, but it's actually not. It's a bit more driving, with some good strumming, maybe a return to form of their old Nothing New-era sound.  It's lacking the one spark of greatness to catapult it out of B-side territory, but at this point, I'll take it over the flip.