Acrpost: A Project of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres

Event Description

Local acoustic folk-pop quartet, Elephant Island, celebrate the release of their third CD, "Don't Say You Don't Know What You Want", their first for local indie label Aaargh! Records. Special guests on cello (Laura Clement) and double bass (Glen Manders) will join Galen Hartley (vocals, acoustic guitar), Jamie Cummins (piano, wurlitzer, accordion & mellotron), Marc Jenkins (pedal steel, electric guitar, electric bass), and Kelby MacNayr (drums).

This is their most ambitious recording to date; a concise and purposeful account of honesty, illusion and uncertain victories. Over the course of its ten songs, singer/lyricist Galen Hartley seems to argue every angle of a private madness, retracing his steps over themes of family entanglement, doubt, desire, revenge and destiny. It is a desperate, poetic confusion of autobiography and self-made mythology.

Musically, the band roams wild across a dynamic indie folk landscape into territory best described as Elliott Smith meets João Gilberto and The Zombies. (They are sometimes compared to Iron and Wine, Wilco, and Tim Buckley.) Thanks to a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, the band enjoyed the freedom to explore with more ambitious instrumentation and arrangement ideas. The album was recorded and mixed by the band over a two month period in the summer of 2008 at Fresh Air Studios. Producing and arranging the record themselves, they enlisted the talents of friends Brooke Maxwell (baritone sax), Alfons Fear (trumpet), Laura Clement (cello) and Glen Manders (double bass) to fill out the bands' sound. Elephant Island will touring nation-wide in support of 'Don't Say You Don't Know What You Want' in the fall of 2009.

www.elephantisland.net
www.myspace.com/elephantislandvictoria
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