What instruments did Elfin Saddle leave in Vancouver? Most duos would pack only the essentials for a 3,000-mile move to Montreal, but bricoleurs/scavenger artists/pack rats Jordan McKenzie and Emi Honda didn’t bear a light, or predictable, burden. Combining ukuleles, singing saws, and a tuba, musical assembly Ringing for the Begin Again is an exercise in utility. It imparts their flavor of DIY-folk exotica with a distinctly desperate ruggedness likely for a pick-up cantina band in a high-sea spaghetti western.
So it’s not surprising that the geographic influence is nomadic, laden with local instruments and myths acquired port by port. But in the folk tradition, any lasting story is refitted; “Hammer Song” is, for instance, a perversion of the standard “If I Had A Hammer.” Where the original longs to empower the community with infrastructure, Elfin Saddle’s version is a touch more complicated, commingling deconstruction with generation, group sacrifice with individual transcendence.
“We are a battery smashing in,” McKenzie whirs as he plots destruction and escape, designing to “make the structure weak” and promising, “When the beams start to fall/ I will slip into the street/ And as it dies, I will rise.” For the duo, there is both beauty and pleasure in dismembering mythic association, in substituting their own synthetic creations built from the pieces of outmoded composition. Elfin Saddle can’t create new matter, but they display an inventive ability to flesh out and reconfigure theme and narrative piecemeal until it barely resembles the kernel it came from.
It's for this reason that their lengthier tracks are most successful. Album tent poles “The Bringer,” “The Living Light,” and “The Ocean” all err on the side of artsy, but the epic approach is mesmerizing. Elfin Saddle thrive in wide open space, demonstrating this strength in particular with the drone of “The Living Light” and “The Ocean.” Honda contributes her best minstrel work to the latter. On the album finale, she sings in Japanese over her bobbing accordion while screeching strings swoop in like seafowl over a deep raspy snare. But even more interestingly, Elfin Saddle are aware of their vulnerabilities and of the risk of long wayward movements and rebutting arrangements: the princess protagonist of “The Ocean” strays too far from her kingdom and is displaced from it forever.
Unfortunately, the more concise efforts are not as effective. “This is a story of a frenzied bloom,” explains Honda in the ultimate line of “Sakura,” another tale of decay and regrowth. Yet the accompanying build feels more encumbered than frenzied, breaking down suddenly just short of the finish. “Running Sheep” and “Muskeg Parade,” on the other hand, are delivered with the monotonic matter-of-factness of a small high school marching band. Perhaps these short bursts are more enthralling live. Just the visible array of Elfin Saddle’s rucksack would likely make for an impressive stage show. But ultimately, these briefer efforts are merely cute against the serious melancholy of their drone collages.
1. The Bringer
2. Running Sheep
3. Hammer Song
4. Sakura
5. Muskeg Parade
6. The Living Light
7. The Procession
8. Temple Daughter
9. The Ocean
More about: Elfin Saddle
