Shooting The Moon. Elephant

Elephant and Shooting The Moon took me for a trip over the past weeks and here is my travel log.

During the pandemic Rotterdam band Elephant debuted with 'Big Thing'. Sure, I heard that the band makes beautiful music, but somehow it did not get to me. The same happened with Shooting The Moon. Everyone else liking indiefolk disagreed with me. This in itself is not a reason to persevere. I incentivised myself to give the album and band a second and third chance. The question is: did it pay off?

Again, to start, Elephant writes and plays beautiful songs. Decades of beautiful music comes to me from decades ago to quite recently. Britpop in the Teenage Fanclub variety, harmony singing by everyone since CSN to Fleet Foxes and Half Moon Run. There are even Nels Cline like guitar solos on the album. It's all there - and they are, nearly, all artists that I do not warm to with ease. Mind, nearly.

What I tried to do next, is identify why this is, because, as I wrote twice already, the songs as such are good. An example that comes to me, is Christopher Cross, from around 1979, e.g. because of a song like 'Moonlight'. The man had some beautiful hit songs. They were beautifully sung and yet, you do not find them in my extensive collection. Soft music, but somehow without a heart, a somewhat clinical beauty. Like Teenage Fanclub may be inspired by Big Star, but polished everything for so long that there was no edge left to get hooked on.

A song like 'April' is exemplary for what I'm trying to say. Yet, I hear how much attention has gone into the song. The atmospheric guitar sound, let alone the singing. This is really good but where is the life, the joy?

Photo: Peter van Esch

So, what happens when I put the record louder? Being soft music, I tend to put the album on soft as well. Two things happened. The music opened itself as it were. The mix became more apparent, the individual instruments came forward one by one making the songs breath as it were. What also came forward, was that dirty guitar one of the three guitarist plays here and there. (I just read in 'Oor' that the band gives no explanation on who sings or plays what.) This element surely made me listen better.

The duet with Meskerem Mees 'The Morning', is a good example of what I heard so much better, but also the slightly more up tempo 'Bullets' containing the album title Shooting For The Moon or the opening song 'Post-Punk'. I found more and more Wilco in the album and that is not a bad thing to reach for. What also came through is the link with Half Moon Run with a Wilco lead guitar and I was feeling better and better at ease.

Slowly but surely, Elephant got me onto its side and I feel myself being slightly surprised. I had not expected this trip to end so pleasantly. Shooting The Moon has convinced me that Elephant's songs are not theoretically beautiful only. The album contains far more life than Christopher Cross' or James Taylor's records, to mention two 70s singer-songwriter giants from the West-Coast scene. I still relate to where I was coming from in a few of the songs but the journey certainly changed my point of view as well. Travel log closed.

Wout de Natris

You can order Shooting The Moon here:

https://excelsior-recordings.com/products/elephant-shooting-for-the-moon