Elephant Tree: Elephant Tree (2016)
Note: This is day one of VinylSpinning’s “Dreaming of a White Christmas” series -- inspired, in part, by the fact that I’m writing this from sunny, summery Brazil, and, in part, because I seem to have a lot of blended black/white vinyl in my racks.
My patience and enthusiasm for modern-day stoner rock has tapered off from flood to trickle in recent years, as I refocused my fandom towards obscure ‘70s hard rock; but London’s Elephant Tree broke through my resistance with this eponymous long-player, released five years ago.
Formed in 2013 by Jack Townley (vocals, guitar), Peter Holland (bass), Sam Hart (drums) and Riley MacIntyre (guitar, production), the band took its name from the peculiar, thick-trunked trees species, Bursera microphylla, found in the Southwestern U.S. and Northern Mexico.
But before you presume that this reference aligns the group solely with ‘90s desert rockers like Kyuss and Fu Manchu, know that Elephant Tree actually inhabit another, nebulous domain situated between stoner rock and grunge, that’s also home to bands like Earth, Snail, and Gozu, to name but a few.
Meaning that Elephant Tree’s debut full-length (which followed a 2014 EP called Theia) comes chock-full of sludge-riffed, doom-paced, one-word-title drone rockers, often topped with soothing, sleepy vocal harmonies -- e.g. “Wither,” “Dawn,” and “Fracture.”
But it also plucks mournful acoustic material (see “Circles”) right out of the ‘90s, “Seattle unplugged” tradition, and my favorite number, “Echoes,” offsets its thundering riffs with a bluesy, elastic lick, before submerging into a bubbling trip hop bridge that reminds me of ... Zero 7!
Oh, and the bowel-shuddering, detuned power chords of “Aphotic Blues” and hypnotic closer “Surma” remind me of Atlanta, Georgia’s Royal Thunder and Salt Lake City’s SubRosa, so I’m guess that those groups’ brief surge in popularity -- both in the U.S. and the U.K. -- probably impacted Elephant Tree’s origin story.
A story that continued with a sophomore long-player named Habits (2019) and a live set called Day of Doom Live (2020), and will presumably survive beyond the world’s present, on-again, off-again pandemic limbo, so stay tuned.
More Latter-Day Stoner Rock: Abrams' Blue City, Bask’s American Hollow, Belzebong’s Sonic Scapes & Weedy Grooves, Black Capricorn’s Born Under the Capricorn, Bongripper’s Satan Worshiping Doom, Elbrus’ Elbrus, Gozu’s The Fury of a Patient Man, Green Druid’s Ashen Blood, Hashtronaut's No Return, House of Broken Promises’ Using the Useless, Lo-Pan's Colossus, Mammoth Storm’s Fornjot, Queens of the Stone Age’s Lullabies to Paralyze, Royal Thunder’s CVI, Sasquatch’s Sasquatch IV, Sigiriya’s Return to Earth, Snail’s Feral, Toner Low’s Toner Low, SubRosa’s No Help for the Mighty Ones, The Wandering Midget’s From the Meadows of Opium Dreams, Wo Fat’s The Black Code, Young Heart Attack's Mouthful of Love.
