Elf Power – Walking With the Beggar Boys
Athens, Ga.-based Elf Power paints a swath of Mark Bolan’s dark-red rouge across a sunset of psychedelic garage noise, like a mid-’60s Creation-influenced mod band anticipating the next 10 years of British rock. A number of tracks on the band’s latest offering, Walking With the Beggar Boys, could lead off the next Nuggets retrospective and no one would be the wiser. But there’s an intangible ethos weaving its way around bandleader Andrew Rieger’s groovy, gothic imagination that elevates the songs above mere nostalgia. Maybe it’s the quirky authenticity in Rieger’s blend of communal ideals with quasi-eastern religious turns of phrase. Or maybe it’s just the fact that the record has a distinct lack of bum melodies or toss-off tracks. Call it “neo-psychedelia” if you want, Beggar Boys is ultimately a great rock record by a criminally underappreciated band.