Elephant Society – Rembrandt 1642
Elephant Society was formed by three high school friends in Jackson, Ohio — Logan Paone on guitar and vocals, Reed Parker on guitar and electric piano, and Alex Eliopoulis on the drums. David Redosevic rounds out the group on the bass guitar. This past July, they released their first full-length album, Rembrandt 1642. I recently spoke with Logan Paone about the album and the band.
The band describes themselves as “indie/post rock/noise.” Many of their songs are heavy on reverb and rich textures. In their shifts from psych-rock to atmospheric ambient noise, their diverse influences become evident, from Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Explosions In The Sky to Queens of the Stone Age and Radiohead.
Their recording process lent itself to the general vibe of the album, as Logan described it:
We recorded with a friend in downtown Canton named Ron Flack. His studio is in his home, and the rooms are all hardwood floors. We recorded all the instrument tracks in his living room. Its a great big room and gave the entire album a great reverberated feeling ambiance. As far as mixing/mastering goes, we took tracks to Tim Gerak at the Mammoth cave studio in Akron. He made everything on the album sound astounding.
Rembrandt 1642 starts out with a high-pitched squeel, some reverb-laden guitar picking and noises from the amps. The guitar intensifies and the noise gets more out of control until it drops off into the next song, the mid-tempo “Repeat,” and then into the more upbeat “Twang #5,” both featuring slide guitar hooks.
After the dynamic and atmospheric instrumental “The Opposite Comes To Mind,” comes the spoken-word track, “Academics.” Logan told me a little about the creation behind this song, and said, “We all really wanted to have our friend Lee, do a spoken word track before we ever started recording. The music itself was all written in one day at the studio. We told Lee to write about anything and everything he wanted.”
Three heavier, guitar-driven songs follow that, “Empty Skies,” “Shade” and “Tragic Understanding.” The album closes with “A Young Man’s Plea.” Reed Parker puts out on a mesmerizing performance on his Rhodes piano, just barely shining through on the verses, then kicking on the distortion to tear through the chorus. The album closes with huge guitar, keyboard and bass, with a soulful vocal performance and the drums making things all the more chaotic while still maintaining control.
You can listen to the album for free at Elephant Society’s Bandcamp page. Though the band was gracious enough to let us all listen for free, I’d highly suggest picking up the digital download on that site.
Check out the band at their Facebook page, and keep up with their Tumblr for the latest.
They’ll be playing with Suun at The Auricle in Canton on October 1.
