LUCKY ELEPHANT - STARSIGN TRAMPOLINE
July 09, 2009,
Written by Benjamin Macnair
Label: Sunday Best
Release date: 19/07/09
Website: http://www.myspace.com/luckyelephantmusic
Buy: Amazon
The Isle of Wight has spawned Bass Virtuoso Mark King, and their latest musical export, Lucky Elephant have as much to offer, albeit in a slightly less in your face fashion. Starsign Trampoline contains no grandstanding musical statements that would threaten to pin lesser bands to the wall, but it loses nothing in that.
The 11 tracks on the album by the four piece band of multi-instrumentalists fuses charming pop music, and concrete musical motifs into a satisfying whole. Although there is nothing here to date the band, their melodically involved sound fuses the traditional electric guitars and bass with effective piano and clavinova, jazz drums, harmony vocals and more esoteric instruments like Wurlitzers, Melodicas and Harmoniums.
The album starts with a charming instrumental, Lucky Elephant, with it’s opening school piano motif and synclavier sound main theme which sounds like Belle and Sebastian might do if they played Jazz, whilst songs such as Edgar involve story telling lyrics with musically complex arrangements.
However, it is not all bright and pop, with the bleakness of ‘Modern Life, changing people’ and the ‘The Pier’ telling of the impact of progress on small communities.
The gallic twang of the group’s lead singer and Melodica player Emmanuel Labescat sets the band apart, and although their blend of pop and other forms has been compared to the likes of the Bees, they offer a lot more than that.
However, like other groups such as Tunng, I fear that this album will become a cult favourite, rather than a mainsream hit, which is a shame for an album that deserves a better fate than that.
Rating: 8/10
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