BY NOW IT'S NO secret that all music lumped into the category of emo-core gets a bad rap from just about anyone over the age of 23. "The band's sort of emo," you say in a lame attempt to explain a kind of music that, while possessing several qualities of traditional rock, also cares a little more how it looks in the eyes of smart folk, and gives not a rat's ass about anyone who might call people pansies for wearing their troubled hearts on their sleeves. Eyes roll and brows raise Heavenward as the worst of the genre comes to mind, bands who've fondly embraced all of emo-core's clichéd characteristics: calculated, repetitive tempo changes, therapy diary lyrics, and melodic flourishes that, if you think about it with bald-faced honestly, come dangerously close to sounding like something Bush's Gavin Rossdale or Live's Ed Kowalczyk would proudly slap on an album. Then, of course, there's the plaintive, slightly rasped vocals sung snugly from the back of the throat--pretty, but not too pretty. The bands themselves do everything possible to distance themselves from anything explicitly "emo," balking at the term, but it's a lost cause.
About the only respectable move any emo-ish band can make is to embrace the stereotype, and improve upon it in quiet yet profound ways. Like Elliott does. Hailing from Louisville, Kentucky, Elliott (comprised of former members of Falling Forward and Empathy--how's that for an emo name?) excels at the kind of melodies and feverishness that bands like Sunny Day Real Estate and Mineral set the standard with, but takes it a step further by fully embracing its affection for, dare it be said, pop. There's plenty to recognize and identify with: Bands like Quicksand and Texas Is the Reason come to mind, which is what made Elliott's first full-length album, Us Songs, a fair yet memorable effort, but nothing in any way new. Now with the recently released False Cathedrals (Revelation), the band has matured into a gleaming pop locomotive that remains altogether true to its original, post-hardcore (for lack of a better, less bristling term) roots.
Two songs set the tone right off the bat on False Cathedrals, opening the album with a trilling piano intro ("Voices") followed by the band's brazen positioning of the keys as its lead instrument ("Calm Americans"), until the drums fight for center stage and remain there for the remainder of the album. Vocally, False Cathedrals is a headstrong flurry of unselfconscious emotion and enthusiasm, not at all embarrassing in its sheer head-thrown-back raging or pretty passion. "Drive on to Me" is catchy and automatically pop in its infectious, receptive structure. It stands out on False Cathedrals, but the seriousness that follows this light track in no way lessens the album's pop feel. "Calvary Song" gets downright sleazy, its sexy bass line and heated guitar winding like a snake while singer Chris Higdon straddles the line between heat and detachment. "Shallow Like Your Voice" is a contemplative breath of loveliness that boasts some of the album's most beautiful time changes, as well as most beautiful lyrics: "Don't say a thing, don't move a word"; "We are the couple called couple called suicide. We are the Red Cross white flag. You're tired so let's turn the lights out." It's fitful, struggling, though it still manages to speak gracefully with nary a stutter. "Carving Oswego" mines even more romantic loss, and it's on this song that Elliott shows its range of versatility with samples, disparate guitar styles, and drumming that shifts effortlessly from pummeling to lulling.
This comprehension of classic rock songwriting, pop playfulness, and a steady devotion to traditional emo, post-hardcore, and whatever they deem to call it these days finds Elliott poised to set its own new standards for a genre it has come to relatively lately. And damn if they might not improve it in the process.
