ELEPHANT MICAH
The Untied States of ELEPHANT MICAH CD
(INRI067)
After a self-released cassette ('Lost Sense Recollected', Luddite Rural Recording Co-op, 2001) and a debut full-length ('Low Energy Dance Music', Landmark Recordings, 2002), Elephant Micah was left musically homeless. Luckily, Bluesanct guru Michael Anderson was drumming up limited edition cdr releases for precisely such cases under the label name Orphanology. When Anderson agreed to take on the project, Elephant Micah's Joe O'Connell set to work mining 4-track tapes of early demos as well as making new recordings of forgotten songs. The culmination of this effort was a 52 copy issuing of 'The Untied States of Elephant Micah'. One for each state in the union.
Everyone liked it. It was perhaps the only Orphanology release to ever sell out.
With the Bluesanct reissue, 'The Untied States of Elephant Micah' takes its deserved place alongside the psychedelia of 2003's 'Elephant Micah, Your Dreams Are Feeding Back' as a crucial volume in the ever-unfolding folk mystery that is Elephant Micah.
The cover image that accompanies 'USofEM' is a nighttime interstate scene snapped while speeding through a blizzard. The superimposed asterisks represent an actual archway (made of blue steel in real life) that welcomes Hoosier travelers of I-70 to Ohio. The song "Ohio Arch" memorializes this gateway in a stumbling country waltz. It's the tongue-in-cheek story of bored dreamers’ pilgrimages from border city Richmond, Indiana to nearby Dayton. They are met at the state line by the beer-guzzling ghost of Bob Pollard himself. Like the album's double incidence of tacky casio beats, this reverence for the low fidelity heroism of the '90s Midwest draws sincerity, even sensitivity, out of sarcasm.
Such is the deceptive behavior of The Untied States as a map. It gets you lost on purpose. It remains a blurred and bastardized version of a real place, a catalogue of sonic terrain trekked by a geographically bound musical imagination. Take it with you the next time you visit Indiana.
RIYL: Lou Barlow, Mark Kozelek, Neil Young, Hayden
A second album of sorts, Untied States is, as sole band figure Joe O'Connell puts it in the liner notes, a compilation of not-really-intended-for-release songs that "were taking up too much space in my brain." A drastically limited release ‹ something like 52 copies total ‹ meant that this would always be one for the fans straight up, and it functions as that through and through, an enjoyable peek into Elephant Micah's take on things for those already interested. O'Connell's strength lies in how he uses what had often become ends in themselves ‹ specifically the tropes of lo-fi recording as familiarized in the nineties ‹ and applying them to his own reflective, often beautiful songs. Here, given the get-something-down-on-tape nature of many of the recordings, it's all the more noticeable, starting with the opening piano/vocal/tape hiss of "Vet Sounds." The murky, steady rhythmic roil of "%%%%%%%%%%%" and the contrast between calm guitar and brusque, cheap drum machine punches on "Unairconditioned Instrumental" also provide further examples of lo-fi's engaging warmth in the right hands. Untied States isn't just rough demos, though, as the carefully constructed instrumental melancholy of "Rides Away Again" or the banjo-led "Two TV Sets" shows. A song like "Grace of St. Christopher," with its full band arrangement provided by O'Connell in a series of overdubs, demonstrates his own ability to self-arrange quite nicely. "Ohio Arch" is perhaps the album's core, appearing in two different takes, a stately, mournful version and a more laid back, almost bluesy ramble, both effective in their own ways.
- Ned Raggett (All Music Guide)
THE UNTIED STATES OF ELEPHANT MICAH
INRI067
• vet sounds
• grace of st. christopher
• rides away again
• ohio arch
• %%%%%%%%%%%%
• april 32nd
• unairconditioned instrumental
• two tv sets
• everything is good
• ############
• ohio arch reprise
• old song on new love
RELEASED: February 4th, 2004
MP3: more tracks available in the SOUND section