Elephant 6's rapturous, heartbreaking story
00:00 This episode of all songs considered comes to you from NPR Music, home for Tiny Desk concerts, of course, but also reviews, interviews, and conversations about the best new songs, albums, whatever else is happening in the vast and wondrous world of music. NPR music, also where you will find Tiny Desk editor and curator of all things loud and strange. Lars Got Rich. That's me. This is a really big week for us.
00:25 This is, I am so excited to talk about this. universe. Right. And the universe in this case is the universe of what's known as the Elephant Six collective. The Elephant Six Collective, we are going to attempt to explain what it is, what it was, why it matters. And we're starting with the band The Olivia Trimmer Control. It's a band that is very near and dear to our hearts, and they have a new album out this week, but it's not just any album. This is their third and final album. It's their first album. It's their first album. It's their first in almost 30 years? Almost 30 years.
01:03 Yeah, they had put out two incredible records in the late 90s, this great band from Athens, Georgia, that would mix psychedelic pop music with experimental music, and that's really being extremely reductive. Yeah. But this is a record that I don't think either of us expected to see. No, it's been a long time coming. This album is also significant
01:25 because it may be the last true album album by this sprawling collective Elephant Six, the Elephant Six Collective. Yeah. And at least from the original old school founding veteran artists of E6. Yes. This could be the last, because they all kind of came together to finish this album. And we've talked a lot about the Elephant Six Collective on this show off and on over the years. It's loomed very large in our lives.
01:54 We are both Athenians. Yes. We both lived in Athens, Georgia. You live there in the 90s. I was there in the early 2000s. But obviously, to a lot of people, the Elephant Six Collective E6, they still don't know anything about it, even if they know some of the bands from it. So this week, what we're going to do is we're going to talk about the new Olivia Trimmer Control album.
02:14 But we also thought this would be a good excuse to just give everyone kind of a primer on Elephant Six, kind of a starter kit. Yeah, and this is such a sprawling story. You could truly, like, I'm going to call it now. It's doing a 10-part side project of this project. I mean, that's what it's, it's like something like 60 bands, maybe 30 to somewhere, anywhere from 30 to 60 bands. Right. I've seen listed in this collective.
02:42 Do you, Lars, think that you can tell the elephant six story and give some context for what it is and was in 60 seconds or less? All right. And, all right, I'm going to set a timer and go. Rest in Louisiana, sometime in the mid-80s, it's a small college town. Four folks meet in around elementary and middle and high school. These people are Bill Doss, Jeff Mangum, Wilcoon Hart, and Robert Schneider. They all kind of find their way into punk rock. They all start making their version of punk rock, which even to their own admission,
03:18 did not sound like punk rock, but had the spirit of it. It was just noisy and loud and clangorous was the word that I've heard a lot. discover 4-Chack recording, which is a very rudimentary way to make music, but it ended up being the whole way Elephant Six basically operated. There were dips into the Virgin Islands to New York, to Austin, Texas, to out to Los Angeles, but ultimately, members of the band ended up in Denver, Colorado, and Athens, Georgia. Robert Schneider formed the Apples in Stereo out in Denver, and then Olivia Trimmer Control and Nutrimoeckel formed their bands in Athens in my own time.
03:54 I'm sorry, we're at time. That's pretty good, though. I thought that got us at least to like maybe 93, 94. All right, well, you mentioned the Apples and Stereo. I was close. The Apples and Stereo, so Robert Schneider's project. Yeah. He moves out to Denver.
04:10 He meets someone on a bus, the bus to Denver, by the way, and he forms the band with that guy, and they formed the Apples and Stereo. And they released the very first Elephant Six collective song. In 1993, the song was Title Way. So you mentioned four-track recordings and how that was at the heart of everything they did. Yeah. Very low-fi, but so much more than that. So, yeah, we talked about the four-tracking, and a four-tracks is just like a little machine
05:16 where you can basically record your music at home. Today's version of that would be like garage band. You know, it's cheap, like it's fairly accessible. And the reason why they use it is because, you know, there are poor musicians that just wanted to make music And this was in an era. When they're coming up in the late 80s, and especially as they started making recorded music in the early 90s, this is a big studio era.
05:44 Like even a band like Nirvana was going to a big studio to make the big important rock records. And so there is a stigma around four track recording, whereas like, that's not... That's terrible. It sounds terrible. It's unfinished. It's limiting. There's only so many things that you're...
06:02 you can record it once. But in that limitation, the members of Elephant Six, they found their freedom. And they're like, why can't this be the final product? Why can't this be the ultimate expression of my art? And so they got creative with it. Like Robert Schneider in particular, he sort of becomes the glue for all these different bands because he's like Brian Wilson Brain. Yeah, he's sort of the spiritual guide, the unofficial,
06:32 leader of this collective that's about to get very, very big. So Robert Schneider, like, we talk about Athens, Georgia a lot when it comes to Elephant Six, but a lot of the recording actually, especially those classic albums, like on Avery Island and Nutrimalco Hotel and Duskett Cuebus Castle by Olivia Trumb Control. Those records were basically made in Denver with Robert Schneider because he had this mad scientist power behind the four track where he would basically take the four tracks, mix it down, put on another four tracks, mix that down, and just keep adding. Well, there's this great documentary, in fact, about the Elephant Six Collective
07:13 called the Elephant Six Recording Company that came out a few years ago. What was it, 22, I think. And there's this great moment where Robert Schneider breaks down how he recorded a song, a neutral milk hotel song with Jeff Meng of the frontman. Okay. Jeff had this banjo record that had a pop in it, so the record would self-loop. You'd put down the needle and it would just go, d'a-n-n-n-pop, and he had used this and another record that had a similar thing,
07:41 and made a composition out of it. We took his loop and ran it through a space echo, which is an old-school, like tape echo machine. You can dial it up so it feeds back on itself. So we recorded the drone, slowing it down to half-speed, and we did it a number of times. Half-speed together. and half speed again, and half speed again.
08:01 I remember when we had finished the fourth track, and we're like, okay, let's listen to this. Within like seconds, all of the cats came into the room and sat right by the speakers. The original banjo track was producing harmonics and tones that you shouldn't even be able to hear. The banjo recording was gone. It had been absorbed into this drone
08:28 that sounded almost like the heart of a UFO. And having the cats wander into the room, that felt like success. Just the whole vibe and spirit of everything they did, basically to your point, very bohemian, whatever thrift store gear they could get their hands on. And they're all in the room together at the same time making this music. Very ramshackle. They're triggering sounds and hitting buttons and turning dials.
09:03 It's this synchronized dance all in real time because all they've got is this four track to record everything. I mean, a lot of these records are just celebrations in calculated versions of mistakes. And I would say at the same time, the thing that I'm always struck by whenever I listen to any of these recordings, we're going to play a whole lot more here. But it's just they're very, very good at this. Oh, yeah. These weren't just like spaced out hippies getting together. I mean, they were. I mean, partly.
09:34 But I mean, just, and whatever happens happens, man, like you listen to these songs. And I think, well, they are very, very good at this. How they get all this chaos to sync up together, especially the way they were doing. It really blows my mind even today 30 years later. I mean, it takes a lot of people to make that kind of synchronized racket, right? So there are stories of them hanging out at potlucks, like once a week, and they would get together at someone's house, and they would talk about art, and they would talk about music
10:10 and they talk about weird philosophy and stuff like that. Film and film and Dada art and surrealist art and that all filtered into this music. A lot of the recordings happened in Denver, but when I think of the scene, I think of Athens. The scene that you describe,
10:28 I think of Athens. I moved there in 93 and I can't overstate how magical that town felt like in the early 90s. It already had a very rich, music history and music scene. Automatic for the people from REM had just come out. B-52s had just released a couple of their biggest albums.
10:47 So I just remember thinking there is just electricity in the air. Right. Like music, you'd go out at night. In February, it was still warm. And music would be spilling out of every restaurant, every doorway. People just wandering around in the middle of the street, cafe seating outdoors. The whole vibe was so inviting, I think, for this. kind of creative spirit that you get when all of these friends get together.
11:13 And to your point, it did take a lot of people. And when they started pulling other friends and creative people into the circle and the Elephant Six collective really starts to take hold, it happens really, really fast. I mean, they go from, you know, the first three years of just, what are we kind of doing? Trying stuff out to. Boom. Like, 1996 to 99 is such an unbelievably fruitful period. for this group of musicians.
11:42 You're getting like both of the Olivia Trimmer Control records, both of the Neutral Hotel records, I think four Apples and Stereo records. Maybe the first music taped record is somewhere in there. The quality and the quantity were one and the same. Well, let's talk about some of the biggest players, I think, in the Elephant Sixth Collective, the bands that grew out of it.
12:04 I thought we could do like the top five goats, like the indisputable, These are the five big ones you really need to know. And then from the extended universe, it gets a little trickier there. But we'll pick five of our favorites from the extended universe that people should know about. And, I mean, you've got to start with Olivia Trimmer Control. Also in Nutrimack Hotel. But I think, yeah, for the purposes of this episode and how much Olivia Trim Control kind of like contained this universe, I think we start there.
12:35 I remember, so coming up, I always love Psych Rock. Trippy Bay, I like the Beatles, zombies, you know, the Kings, Pink Floyd, bands like that. And it always bothered me that that sound had kind of disappeared and had become a relic of the past. And that was kind of like the big question mark when a lot of these bands started releasing their material. I think a lot of, the reason why these musicians got together is because they still loved pet sounds. They still loved Sergeant Pepper. They had heard, stories about the Beach Boys' smile sessions and how they were never finished. And I think the goal, ultimately, especially for Olivia Chamber Control,
14:03 was to imagine their own version of smile. I mean, that's the thing. I always thought, well, why can't people be doing new versions of this? I mean, like, now we don't think anything of it. Everybody's doing everything from every era now. But at the time, we were still in this very linear progression with music, new genre, you know, we're at grunge and, you know, the birth of whatever, glam rock, hair metal, whatever it is, hip hop, all these different things coming.
14:32 And no one had really stopped and gone back and said, well, let's revisit that crazy sound and see what we can do with it. And when I moved to Athens and started hearing these guys and going to shows, and it was just so magical to me, and I just thought, finally. And the other thing about Liberty Tron Control, and maybe we'll talk about this more when we talk about the new album later on. But it wasn't just the Beatles and the Beach Boys and the Zombies. It was also Karl Heinz Stockhausen.
15:01 It was also like old school Disney soundtracks. It was also Iana Sanakis. Like they were really into the like the weird avant-garde dudes, but also the stuff that you wouldn't expect. They're very influenced by sound collage and music Concret and John Cage. And they wanted all to live in the same place because it, It made sense in their brains that why can't a pop song be weird? Why can't a drone song also be a pop song at the same time?
15:31 So we need to actually move pretty quickly here. And we're not doing a very good job because we're lingering so much on Olivia Trimmer Control. But it is important because I see them as sort of the Rosetta Stone for all the other bands. So number one, I'll say, and we're not ranking these, but I'll just say that that's the first one of the top five goats. Olivia Trimmer Control. Second, I think you got to go, you mentioned Neutral Milk Hotel, but I think we got to go with Apples and Stereo because Robert Schneider was the frontman of Apples and Stereo, and he's just too important to this collective. Absolutely, and there are so many different ways into this band. I think the song you picked is one of the earlier tracks. I also love the album, her wallpaper reverie, but I think, yeah, you've got to start with something a little early. Yeah, this is the song Glowworm from Appleson Stereo.
16:46 I think it was, I think it came out as a single in 94 and then was eventually on their debut. As folks are listening, people will pick up on a lot of some similarities between the bands, and I think that's sort of the point, especially since they're all kind of like in the room together making music and we're into similar things. But the thing that always distinguish apples to me from a lot of other bands is that Robert Schneider and the band had such a clean sense of melody. Oh, that's at the heart of so many of these. Super strong melodies, incredible harmonies, too.
17:19 Yeah. I mean, yeah. And such like a frenzied but fun energy. But the other thing that Robert was so brilliant to add was guitar fuzz, I think, in particular. He had this very secret proprietary chain of effects that he had come up with. Or maybe just a really terrible amp. Or just a terrible amp and a terrible mic recording the terrible am. To get the best guitar fuzz I've heard ever in my life, you hear it in the Olivia Trimmer Control stuff, you hear it in Appleson stereo, and you really hear it in Neutral Milk Hotel.
17:57 Especially the first album. Yeah, on Avery Island. But then the biggest album, arguably from the entire collective in terms of, certainly in terms of its popularity and its reach, is in the air of. is in the airplane over the sea. Yeah. I mean, it's not hard to imagine that's just a completely blown out, I suppose. It is such a great sound. This is song Ghost from Neutral Milk Hotel.
19:08 It was such a watershed moment for the Athens music scene, for Elephant Six. This was the album that, as you said, kind of like cracked. Like, a Nutrimel hotel got referenced on like an episode of Parks and Rec. Yeah. You know. So it comes out in 98. Yeah. And I had, I was living abroad at the time, but still coming back to Athens for visits and everything.
19:31 And I remember coming back that fall of 98. And everyone was talking about Neutrallke Hotel and this album. Never would have thought, oh, this is the one. This is the one that's just going to crack this collective completely open. But then, like, a few years later, I go to see Franz Ferdinand in some big arena show. And before they take the stage, they were playing this album through the PA system. And I thought, what is happening? It's an album that never stopped rippling.
20:01 Like, it never lost its mystery, which is a big part of this record. Yeah. It's still one of the weirdest records I've ever heard, but in a way that is so heartwarmingly earnest. Yeah. There's something dark and deep inside these songs that Jeff Mangum just had to get out. For decades, people have been trying to figure out what these songs are about. Lots of theories. I mean, the main one is that it's about Anne Frank. Right. He had read Diary of the Young Girl, and it had opened something up inside of him. and it came pouring out of this record.
20:40 So it's a mixture of the influence of that book, but he was also excavating some personal history through this album that are still a mystery to everyone that I think should be for the rest of time. And this was, you know, they went on tour. They did like hundreds and hundreds of dates on this tour. They toured the U.S., they went to Europe, and Jeff had assembled like a really great band
21:06 for this album and for that tour, you'd hear stories of Jeff crashing into the drums after just one song. Yeah. And it was just like the energy was just so high and so urgent. And then things kind of like came crumbling down, which is something we'll talk about later.
21:22 Well, we will talk more about the story of this collective and the turn and how things kind of started to fall apart. And then, of course, where we are today with it. Neutral Milk Hotel ends up kind of over foreshadowing the entire collective because of this one record in the airplane over the sea. Yeah. And because it blows up, and that ends up being a really big turning point.
21:44 We're going to talk about a little bit later. I want to get to a couple other bands first that people need to know from the top five goats from Elephant Six. We've done Olivia Trimmer Control, the Appleson stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel. Number four, I'm going to go with Elf Power. I like this pick because I think it's obvious, but I also don't think it's obvious that Elf Power should be one of the greatest bands, because they were kind of a secret weapon. This is a band fronted by Andrew Rieger with a lot of support from Laura Carter,
23:31 also a very important figure in this band. Yes. And they're also very important in the Elephant Six Collective. They pop up in all these other groups as well. I think one of the corkiest, certainly one of the most active bands, even today in this collective, this is a song called Embrace the Crimson Tide
23:48 from an album called The Wormsion. winter is coming. I cannot tell you how many Elf Power shows I've been to in my life. And when they would play this song, they would bring up like 50 people, however many they could get on stage. And everyone would be on a bucket or a can or, you know, and would just be hammering it to this song. Some of the shows that I would see from Elf Power wouldn't even start until 2 o'clock in the morning. On a work night, you know, like I've got to be at work at 8 o'clock in the morning. And I'd be at a show that would start at 2 o'clock in the morning. They would have, did you ever see one of the shows where they had this guy or somebody wearing a
24:29 giant elf head? No. It was a head the size of this room. And it was like paper mache or whatever. And it was an elf, a bald elf head. And some on a regular size body and that person would be dancing around with this giant elf head out in the audience. Everything about just the whole community in the universe that they build up was just so wonderful and magical. The thing that's crucial to me about Elf Power is that, to me, they have the most direct line to the Elephant Six's punk rock ethos, both in sound and style. When I was in Athens, Elf Power would play with punk bands, like young punk bands that were like just coming up, and they kind of acted like mentors.
25:28 Last one, the last goat from the Elephant Six collection. top five essential bands of Montreal. This is an interesting one. There are so many bands that could be in the spot. Sure. And I can't keep up with what Montreal does these days. They put out an album like every year. I mean, they just had one this year, yeah.
25:48 Yeah. And, but, man, they had such a fascinating run and then a twist in turn in their sound and aesthetic over the years in a way that's kind of like kept their moment in a really interesting way. I want to make you cry and sweep you off your feet. I want to slap your face. I want to paint your nails.
26:39 I kiss your friends. I want to dress the same. I want to defend you. I want to crash your car. I want to scratch your cheeks. I want to make you sick. I want to sell you out. I want to expose your plot.
27:11 So this is a band of Montreal, not only fronted by Kevin Barnes, but he does just about everything in the band. These days, yeah. I mean, the harmonies, the plays all the instruments, not when they do it live, of course. But if you're thinking this doesn't sound like everything else we've heard. I mean, to your point, very sort of prince-influenced, dance, disco, funk, psychedelic, all swirl together. There's a demarcation point in around 2004 or five when he, he had been making a lot of, like, psychedelic pop songs as of Montreal,
27:49 and they're very lo-fi and quirky and very much of the style and of the time. And then he was like, I think I actually want to make danceable indie pop music. So this is like 2008. This is a song called Gallery Piece from an album called Skeletal Lamping, which we covered on All Songs Considered when it came out back in 2008. I would say certainly one of the most active bands still today, along with Elf Power in the Elephant Six Collective. Do you think it's fair to say this is also maybe one of the poppiest bands?
28:20 Mainstream is a word that I'm not sure ever comes up when you talk about Elephant Six, but I think of them as maybe being one of the more mainstream bands. Maybe it's just because they had a song that was in an Outback Steakhouse. I mean, I was about to say the Outback Steakhouse commercial. Yeah, sort of the band. Which at the time was so controversial, but now looking back, I was like, you know what, dude, get your paper. It's your money. I asked Kevin Barnes about it at the time, and he gave such a great answer. He's like, well, if you just want music to happen for free, I suppose. But he's like, I got bills to pay. He was unapologetic. And, yeah, I'm with you. Like, I mean. You can make, you can make arguments date all night and day. Yeah. But I wanted to highlight some of the others that maybe don't get as much attention. And I think you and I both agree what I will put here at the number one spot, even though, again, we're not ranking them. I'll just say, first off, Gotta go with the gerbils.
29:15 And probably what I would consider maybe the greatest song to come out of this collective of musicians. She comes to me whenever I am locked inside my room married in the tune that I call love. She sings to me.
30:13 me the words I cannot hear her love is so real you said the best song
30:45 that come from this band I thought you might actually introduce this as the greatest love song of all time
30:50 I mean it's also that it is one of the greatest love songs of all time glue from the
30:55 album are you sleepy? From 1998 same year as in the airplane over the sea. I mean, that's bonkers. It's bonkers.
31:03 Absolutely bonkers. The amount of stuff. Same year as Black Foliage by Olivia Tremor Control. Just like, what an incredible year for music. What was happening? So this is primarily the project of Scott Spillane, who I think of as,
31:17 I think of him as like a flugel horn player who's in neutral milk hotel, but he's obviously so much more than that. Front's this band. This is a song that I think Jeff Mangum he would cover, and I think he, I think he once said this is one of the greatest songs that's ever been written.
31:33 And so, you know, to have your bandmate and friend say something about a song you've written, that's significant. I'm sure that made Scott's Boeing feel like a million bucks. We've got to hear the build here. We've got to hear the job. So how do you read glue in this song, by the way? Because I have my own little theory. Do you have a take on what he means by Your Love is Glue?
32:20 I mean, he kind of changes the lyrics at the end. It's kind of like a sticky white glue, so it's a little bit like the Velvet Underground song. So maybe that's it, but what's your take of it? Oh, I think he's sniffing glue. I mean, there's also... I think it's... Drugs were a part of these group of musicians. I think he's high on the fumes of her love.
32:47 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's when he says your love is love. like glue. I think it's because it's like I'm just high on love. So glue with gerbils at number one. Number two, and again, like this, it all gets very, very tricky here in terms of what we could go with, but I
33:02 think we're both in agreement on the band, the instruments. This is low-key, one of my favorite Elephant Six projects. This is a band that was put together by Heather McIntosh. She's a cellist and composer. These days, she writes
33:18 Hollywood movie scores. It does not surprise me. But back in the day, she was kind of like, she was a member of Olivia Comer Control. She was a member of Circular Taurus System. She was on a band called Japan Cakes that both you and I love. But this was her project, and it started when I lived in Athens. And so I actually saw the instruments play quite a bit. And when I was the music director for W.O.G., the student station,
33:43 I booked the instruments to play in our studio. And I really wish I could find that dat tape. I think of a lot of the music from the instruments as being very very cinematic, largely instrumental. But that's Heather's singing, so there are vocals on the songs as well. Yeah, her approach to the, it's more like Laurel Canyon. Oh, I hear that. Then it is, you know, then it is the Beach Boys or the Beatles,
34:55 although that's in there too. But like all the players that you would think about from this collective of musicians would pop in John Fernandez from Olivia Trauma Control plays. Yeah. Peter Urchick, who also a member of the Olivia's, he's in this group. everybody just kind of play on everybody's records. That was always the vibe. It was like, hey, I have a song that I've worked on.
35:19 It's almost done. I could really use a guitar part right here or whatever. Well, they had so many to choose from. And basically anything that they could think of, like, anybody play a singing song? Do we get that? I mean, they could find somebody for that. My Heather McIntosh story is that she used to work at a video store in Athens.
35:39 Vision video? I was going to say kangaroo video. Oh, I don't know that one. Maybe is what it was called? Maybe it was Vision. I can't remember the name of it, but this was the late 90s, early 2000s, and I would go in, and they would have the different clerks, you know, they'd have a shelf of each clerk's picks of movies, and I would always just make a beeline for Heather's and just pick out, you know, she was,
36:01 I could always count on her for some. I used to, for a summer, I worked at Dunkin' Donuts. She would get like a dozen donuts every Saturday for that summer, and so we would chit, chat a little bit while I was getting her donuts together. I'm so glad that she's turned to film and TV scoring too. She's perfect. She's exceptional at it. And so many movies and TV shows that people listening to this podcast have probably
36:26 watched. So the instruments I would call, and actually I think maybe all of these, except for the, well, no, gerbils too, maybe part of what I would call maybe the second wave of E6 bands. because like the instruments released their debut album, billions of phonographs, that was like 2002. Yeah.
36:44 This is my era in Athens. So I came in during the second era. Yeah. So number two, the instruments. Number three, do you want to go with a band called Bula? I do want to go with a band called Bula. Bula?
36:57 Bula? So this is a song called Scorpeachian Rivers are shores. It's that gently twist. So this is a song called score from Augusta and the album when your heartstrings break.
37:56 This is a band that stayed pretty active for a while. I mean, long enough for us to cover them on All Songs Considered back. I think in the early 2000s they had an album called Yoko.
38:05 Much more polished effort than this, but... This was always a curious one. This is from the Denver contingent of Elephant 6, and it was a discovery by Robert Schneider.
38:15 Yeah, I think they started in San Francisco. He heard a demo... So Robert Schneider heard a demo tape, and he was like, can I put this out? Yeah, I mean, he definitely pulled them into the E6 universe.
38:27 They were, yeah, yeah. So this was like an example of this is the universe expanding in the late 90s, early 2000s, where somebody would hear a band that they liked or a musician, and they would jive with a musician that they liked and be like, hey, come on over here. And so that's what Bula was. And it's so funny because I remember when their first albums came out, they kept like comparing them to the Olivia's and Neutrius.
38:52 for Milko Tom, like, they're nothing like those fans. Yeah. This is like a straight pop band. Very zombies-like, but, like, there's a crispness to their songwriting. They're more like Bert Backrack. I still hear a trippiness in it, though, at least in the early stuff with Bula. Yeah. I don't hear as much in some of the later stuff they did.
39:13 So this is Bula from the album when your heartstrings break. But let's do a couple bands that are still pretty active with E-6. Number four, I'll go with, how about Great Lakes, the band Great Lakes? Yeah, they're still moving and agroofin. They just put out a record this year. So you mentioned how Great Lakes had an album out just this year, which was called Fear of the Fear. This is from their debut album, a self-titled debut that came out in 2000. This is the song A Little Touched.
40:44 Yeah, this was mostly the project of Ben Crum and Dan Donahue and the Jamie Huggins joined later on. And they're kind of like more on the of Montreal side of things. They work a lot with of Montreal. And so this band moved to Athens in like the mid-90s. And now they're based on Brooklyn. But like they're kind of like a great unheralded part of E6, I think. All right. One more from the extended universe.
41:11 Another one that's I think still pretty active. One of the Denver bands, Dressy Bessie. So this is a 2021 single. appropriately called, I'm still here by Dressy Bessie. You can really hear the love of Velvet Underground, I think, in this. This is a band fronted by Tammy Elam, and they just put up, like, a great string of records on Kindercore Records, which was an Athens-based label mostly in the 90s and early 2000s, and then they moved over to Yip Rock a little bit later on.
42:32 But this kind of, they sort of came out of the Apples and Stereo Crew, but they're very much they've always been very much their own thing, like, to the point where, like, I think they released, like, a song of the Power Puff Girls soundtrack. Oh, I didn't know that. And so, like, they made, like, pop, pop music. You know, it wasn't glammy. It was just very glitzy and had a lot of punch to it. It made sense for them to be featured in cartoon soundtracks just because it was so bubbly.
43:03 Yeah, very, very technical. Yeah. And this is one of their newer songs, right? Yeah, so this one came out in 2021. Yeah. So yeah, definitely still active. I mean, a lot of these bands still are. And as I said, just throw a rock.
43:17 There's so many, so many bands that are going unmentioned here, so many different side projects. In fact, if you go to elephant6.com, elephant6.com, you'll see a list of all of the different bands that are part of that universe. I'm not even sure that's a complete list. I mean, I use that list as my guide. because it can get sprawling really fast. And, you know, there was a moment, especially when I moved to Athens in the early 2000s, there were a lot of bands that really tried to attach themselves
43:50 to Elephant Six but really had nothing to do with it. It's not that they weren't, they were bad. Yeah, everyone wanted that label. But everybody wanted that. But everybody wanted to be a part of it, which is understandable. Well, like all stories, like the Elephant Six story, this is the moment where you cue the VH1 behind the music narrator saying, but the good times were not to last.
44:16 Because around 2000 or so, like you mentioned that really rich period in the late 90s, just this explosion of creativity, all these albums coming up, and it extends into maybe 2001-2. But around then, things start to fall apart. Right. So Neutralko Hotel, they didn't break up.
44:39 They just stopped. Yeah. Like at the end of 1998, Jeff Mangum played a solo set at the 40-watt, and then went to play again for a number of years. Yeah. And by the end of the 90s, Bill Doss and Will Cohn Hart, the two folks who basically spearheaded Olivia Trevor Control, had creative arguments, basically. basically. And so they split in Will Cole and Hart started circulatory system. Bill Doss started the Sunshine Fix, both with incredible discographies of their own. And here's
45:16 the thing. It's not where that thing where like your two friends break up and you choose a side. You'll look at the liner notes to the records that on Circuator System and Sunshine Fix, everybody's playing on each other's records. Yeah, the community is still there. It's starting to fray a little bit for sure. I think part of it is just they're starting to get a little bit older. People start moving away. And like they've already pretty scattered around the country, but they really start to scatter and move and and start different jobs.
45:49 I mean, at some point, Robert Schneider ends up getting his Ph.D. in mathematics. Right. And now is an assistant professor, I think at Michigan Tech, I think it is where he teaches. is. And I think they also really struggled with the attention. This brings us back to Neutral Milk Hotel and that turning point within the airplane over the sea where suddenly they're getting all of this attention that they, I don't think anyone was anticipating. And I don't know that they really liked it. And they struggled with it. And I think that's one reason why even Jeff Mangum himself says in that documentary that we mentioned earlier, he even says he basically had a nervous breakdown and needed to just go away for a while. Yeah, I haven't played a gig in two years. I had a little bit of a nervous breakdown, but it was a very wonderful thing to have happened to me. And I mean that sincerely.
46:49 So, yeah, it was really a good thing after a while. At first it was a real drag. But then I learned a lot. But there's just certain things that you can't sing your way out of. so you got to put that aside or you will get really fucked up. So that's what I did in case anybody's wondering. I think, you know, this is what happens with a bunch of like creative people. You have arguments about the direction of the music, about the kind of thing you want to make,
47:19 because art is so personal, right? Yeah. But also, yeah, there may have been a little bit of fear of fame or not wanting to, not knowing what to do with this. newfound fame, and so that's where you get the breakdown from Jeff Mangum. And so those fissures happened and the center just couldn't hold. I mean, the story that is told over and over again with just about all of these bands is one or two albums that are brilliant, game-changing albums, and then you never hear from them. Again, gerbils had a couple albums.
47:56 Neutral Milk Hotel, couple albums, Olivia Trimmer Control, a couple albums and collect of singles. And I never stopped hoping and wishing and thinking maybe everyone is going to get back together and will finally get a third Olivia Trimmer Control album. So in 2005, the Oliver Trimmer Control announced a reunion show at the 40 watt. Me and my friends immediately got tickets. And it was this incredible night that the band marched in Sun Raw Orchestra style into the 40 watt, which is something that they... A club in Athens. Yeah, a club in Athens. And then they just, for the next hour or two, we were just in this whole other world. And this, I think, blew indie rock internet's mind that this band came back. Right. And it set the seeds
48:52 for what would ultimately become the third and final Olivia Trimmer Control record. So lots of fits and starts along the way. You get the elephant six reunion, a big elephant six reunion in 2008. Right. You and I went to some of those shows. They were amazing. And talk of the third album, 2008, it takes a while. Then in 2012, Bill Dostas. And it's, I remember, I think I called you. Yeah. And it was so heartbreaking because it was, he was only 43 years old. But, I mean, that's how old I'm in now. I can't even, like, imagine.
49:33 And he and Will Kohl and Hart together were sort of the creative heart. They were the Lennon McCartney of Olivia Trimmer Control. It was hard to imagine how that band, just on the cusp of they're getting back together and they're going to finally work on that third album. It was just so tragic. It takes them a while to regroup to start to get back and thinking, like, well, maybe we can actually make this third album, Now, do it for Bill.
50:01 On November 29th, 2024, they released their first new songs in 13 years, but something else happens on that very same day. Will Colin Hart dies. He had been dealing with
50:17 multiple sclerosis for years, and for years it was undiagnosed. Which is one of the reasons why they were struggling also just to finish the album because it had become so difficult for him to work. Yeah.
50:30 I hear stories about how, and kind of like the, his final days of like them trying to work on this album where he couldn't really play anymore, so he would just dictate what he wanted. Like, I hear Scott Spillane's horn, like right here. Can we get Scott's Blaine to play a horn part right here? But here we are now this week,
50:56 finally getting this new album. It's called The Sing. place. And it's beautiful and wondrous and magical and trippy and everything that we've ever loved about this band. So we're knocking at the door. So it's like to turn. So here we are this third. So here we're done We've got to know we're here
51:25 But you see it Don't be scared No man So here we are This third and final album That both you and I Didn't think would happen I know that you had a conversation
51:57 With Will many years ago Yeah Basically saying He told you He was like We're working on a third Olivia Tremerichael record I think was 2008
52:05 I mean It was a long time ago And before Will Cole and Hart passed away He expressed to Derek Olmsted, who's kind of a jack of all trades in the Elephant Six universe. He said, I need you to finish this album. So Derek Albsted and Jason N. Smith, who, by the way, is also a jack of all trades.
52:24 These two people specifically are studio wizards. And from an interview that I read on Tone Glow, most of the tracks were done by, like, 2012. Wow. They're like very little overdubbing. It was mostly mixing. and making sure that the weird little squiggle of drone that may appear in the left channel of one song like hits at just the right moment or if there's like a tear of a piece of paper to punctuate like a guitar riff or whatever,
52:57 everything had to be in its place. You know, we talked about earlier how like it sounds ramshackle but it's not. Well, one of the things that of course that they always did so well were all their sound collages and wild experiments. and if you're like just an audiophile, if you just like putting on headphones and getting lost in the universe of sound, there are few bands that do it better than Olivia Trimmer Control.
53:22 There's a stretch on this new album, the same place, called where there's several tracks in a row, path of the parallels, one through seven, I guess parts one through seven. Let's hear a little bit of one of those. Well, here's the thing about this record. basically almost anyone you can think about who's been a part of Elephant Six plays on this album. Yeah.
54:18 That's why I say it. It's the Rosetta Stone. It's the one that everyone grew out of and then came back to. I asked for credits for the album and I printed them out and I started diagramming all the different bands that these people have been in. I mean, just look at these. This one, which was a side project to this one. And I tried to come up with like a family tree from it and realize it's actually just a universe. And that's what makes this album so special.
54:49 It can be so easy to think about the same place as an ending. It could also be easy to think about it as a beginning. But the way that I like to think about this album in particular is that it feels like a portal. It's not it's not the beginning. It's not the end. to something else that hasn't been discovered yet. Well, that was a lot, Lars. But I think we did it.
55:39 Do you think so? Yeah, I think generations from now, people will look back and say, do you remember that episode where they explained in very clear, succinct terms, the exact person? You can't do that in any kind of linear fashion. You can't.
55:56 You can't do it. Or simplify it. I mean, it's so, I was really afraid when we started, I thought, we're going to try to go through these bands quickly, but we're going to end up spending a half an hour just on this one because of all of the side projects that spun out of just this one band. But, you know, here's the thing. There is no easy way to sort of tie this up in a little bow and say, there you go. That's C6. Maybe the best way, I think, is just to say to be continued. I think so. This is a collective that does still exist. And this Olivia Trimmer Control
56:31 album is a real testament to all of the talent and the creative spirit and everything that it took to get us to this point. I don't know. And again, maybe the last true E6 album with all some of those original players, but they're still artists keeping the flame alive. And I think their spirit lived on, not in other collectives. I think the idea of O. V6 goes back to, like, jazz musicians in the 50s and 60s who would just play on each other's records. and but that spirit carries through. And you still see that now with a lot of young musicians. Yeah, maybe they're not calling themselves a collective anymore.
57:12 But like the idea of like making something weird because it's, you're going to explode if you don't, that still happens. Like, and if that happens on garage band or if it happens or if somebody digs up an old four track and learns how to use that and they realize that they don't need their phone anymore, then that's great too. Well, for now, we'll go out on this from Olivia Trimmer Control on the new album, the same place. Lars Gottrich.
57:52 Athens Forever, man. Elephant Six forever. Thanks, as always. Yeah. And I'm Robin Hilton. This is All Songs Considered from NPR Music.
There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click any sentence in the transcript to leave one.