John Elliott

Musician John Elliott weaves stories — the straight and the surreal – into songs

It’s Friday night and I’m cranium-deep in the John Elliott oeuvre (snooty French quotient: achieved), and frankly, I ain’t in the mood to write about the dude.

I’ve been following these seven albums now for the better part of a 17-cent notebook, and the bulk of my observations are hurried transcriptions of choice lyric-storms as they leave his lips and rattle something loose in me — envy, certainly, but mostly, y’know, the urge to write. Weep a rhyme, bleed a poem. Fill an oblivion with doggerel. To tell you the truth, I’d rather just rubber-glue his verbal acuity into a festive grade-school Christmas chain and festoon this page with his unfettered wit, in the fervent, futile hope that you will read what I can hear.

Were I a Professional Critic, I’d liken Elliott (who also records with an elastic entity called The Hereafter) to a Freedy Johnston or a Loudon Wainwright III or a Ben Folds, tres hombres of considerable inspiration to me, and in ways that have naught to do with music. They wield their instruments, acoustic and otherwise, as sharpened smartass weapons, proving that singer-songwriters need not be overly sensitive serious simps: in their depth and transcendence, they can also be funny, crude and caustic. (Wainwright addressing ticket-holders on 1979’s “A Live One”: “Ahhh, shaddap!”)

Mostly, though, I appreciate Elliott’s singular way with words. He has an affection for the malleability of language, the clever twists of phrase, an appreciation for the liquid kinship between rhythm and sounds — how they collide in beautiful violence, how they stand as ideas and images — even if they ordinarily wouldn’t deign to dance together or be seen in the same room.

When he sings, “Let’s go out tonight like it is last year, like everything’s all right and it is late last year, we’ll walk around this planet till we’re home, we’ll both get old” in the very fine “Concerning the Lincoln and Douglas Debates or Love Found Lost” (the political combatants are referenced only in passing; a great many things wander through), the heartbreak is upended by the earnest harmonica/guitar troubadour swerve into such peculiarities as “It’s like all of a sudden there were Germans, acres and acres of Germans, hilarious Germans, their English was pretty good.” But somehow, someway, it works, woven into shape by an autumn tongue through summer lungs — a tone so plaintive it can also get away with a fuzz-stomped, windchime-boned epic called “P***in’ on Plants in the Suburbs” or storm past “Ned’s” covert peccadilloes (2008’s “It Doesn’t Matter Why It Is, It Doesn’t Matter If It’s Wrong”), or shout over the magma-punk gallop of “Cassius Clay” (2011’s “Backyards”), which manages to name-drop Honest Abe assassin John Wilkes Booth en route to the motel room where a certain pugilist cold-snuffed a legend he’d outgrown and strutted into forever as Muhammad Ali.

As long as I’m reveling in the sublime absurd, I should note that Elliott is just as capable with the straight narrative: he builds the title character in “The Ballad of Wallace Green & His Dog” from trouble and mean and gives him a loyal pet, the only thing he loves, the only creature exempt from the roiling internal buzz (here represented by snarling guitars, strings chopped and slashed like Neil Young in ragged rapture) that spurs him to violence. When his dog’s impounded, only an emergency money-wire from Wallace’s mother saves an otherwise oblivious executioner from certain death.

You’re likely familiar with John Elliott’s music if you’ve loitered within sniffing distance of a teevee. Those melodies have gotten around, soundtracked many an Important Moment. “Back Where I Was” and “Eulogy” both surfaced on “Grey’s Anatomy,” thought the latter track, which ends 2006’s “The Hereafter,” was likely stripped of its five-minute tolling-bell coda. Oh, those hypnotic peals! That rhythmic, dolorous clang! But patience, m’son, for it culminates in a cathartic wash of applause, like the kind that chases Elliott as he crisscrosses the country in a road-hungry Honda Civic named Glen that by now has chewed well beyond 250,000 odometer miles to achieve a state of auto-enlightenment.

Anyway, I gotta split. It’s a weak transition, but there you go. My time with Elliott is drawing to a close and I feel an insistent burst of words a-comin’, stories desperate to be told, of neon whispers, stolen moonlight and slippery shades of memory.

Therefore, I highly recommend that you own these albums and see these shows. Follow that Civic to certain salvation. But most of all, just listen, and keep it real in the suburbs. - Cory Frye at The Covallis Gazette-Times (Oregon)

The cover art is plain white with a Sharpie-rendered image of a hangmanscenario with the title as you see it. Kinda cool, eh?

The sound is equally fun.

Equal doses coffeehouse-emo songwriting and studio process the slow folkiness of this CD, taking on a surreal and trippy cool kind of pop thing. And I'm talking about the kind of pop that reminds me of melodies like 'Video killed the radio star-.' partly due to the vocal likeness present in producer, writer, multi-instrumentalist, catalyst, and vocalist John Elliott. And partly due to the cooperative creativity with Andy Featherston who played a variety of instruments as well, along with Bryan Dobbs on bass, Ryan Zwahlen, and Carter Dewberry.

They're fun like that. There's a stylistic melancholy tone and charisma in his voice that reminds me of Gregory Page, Jason Mraz, and Christopher Dale. Meanwhile, the simple arrangements are inventive and fresh with new ideas. Yeah, it's got all the standard arrangement instruments (with the exception of a loud noisy bit called 'Space Junk' about an asteroid heading toward earth), but it's also tastefully crazy with sonic things like cellos that seem to come from nowhere, a waterphone, a harmonica, field recordings, orchestra bells, and an oboe. Even the occasional vocal harmony is commanding while remaining equally complementary.

The songs are lyrically rendered with a similar enthusiasm for classic themes meeting the weird handling of original ironic wit. Take the folksy, radio-friendly 'Teenager in Love,' for instance.

I got a brand new pair of pants / a cool new shirt to wear to the high school dance / you're like a Whitney Houston song / and I'm like Whitney after everything went wrong / I'm just a teenager in love / Gimme just a little bit and I will get over it / I will get over it

There are also unconventional topics such as the arrival of aliens in 'Better Now,' in which he 'wishes he could be the only one-.' and 'there's a boy for every girl at the end of the world' in 'Musical Chairs.'

If this is the ironic hope that you are looking for, check 'em out at www.thehereafterishere.com. - San Diego Troubadour

One of the best things about being a CD reviewer is being able to take note of the abundance of great music coming from the San Diego region. I am constantly blown away by the talent above and below the radar. And the new CD by the Hereafter is no exception. Here are a dozen well-crafted, concise, and very catchy pop songs. Some are mellower than others, most of it is spirited. Some of the mixes are thicker with distorted guitars and some are sparse leaning on piano motifs and a good melody. All of them wreak with the kind of catchiness that has you bouncing your head from side-to-side like a rubber ball.

Remember that song "Video Killed the Radio Star"? This is the fun sense of "pop" that I'm talking about. Add a Paul Simon sense of song structure and vocal mannerism and you're almost there.

Kudos to John Elliott who wrote the material, performed lots of instruments, sang the songs and – low and behold – produced and engineered the album. The effort is a successful one as he manages to push the boundaries of where his pop goes, while keeping the common denominator in tact, making for a wide sonic range without any of the songs alienating that common denominator. Some of the songs have a happy bluegrass influence. Some simply rock out. None go on longer than they're supposed to. The melodies and lyrics are smart and fun, sweetly approaching the line of saccharin without going over it (which is one of the things Paul Simon was so good at). They get in, make their statement, kick you in the teeth, and get out before they start talking too much – the concern and faith is focused on the songwriting over existentialist jamming. And this lends to the urge of rolling any track to its beginning for another spin.

Let's talk about John's voice. It's a great radio-friendly voice. I can't imagine that anyone would find it displeasing, especially when he sings from the introspective approach. It's a lullaby of a voice that's likeable and believable. My only (somewhat) negative observation comes at the one moment in this CD when he reaches for the "gruff' line in the vocal take on one of the more rocker tunes, which is ever so slightly incongruous with the rest. But really, that's it.

This is a marvelous record for the fun, catchy-hook lovers of the world. Buy one and pop it in your player at www.thehereafterishere.com - San Diego Troubadour