Search - Elephant Micah :: Elephant Micah Your Dreams Are Feeding Back

Beautiful singer-songwriter material.

cplewis | Merrifield, Virginia United States | 09/25/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Elephant Micah will inevitably draw comparisons to other quiet male singer-songwriters (Red House Painters, Songs: Ohia, Mojave 3). "Your Dreams Are Feeding Back" does start in that direction, with melancholy vocals and a blurry strummed guitar, but EM mainman Joe O'Connell then begins to introduce samples in his bedroom four-track recordings to make them a little more unpredictable. A few songs later, he mixes things up again by tossing in banjo, electric slide, and a hint of twang, and still later, very simple strings accent his beautiful melodies.All these elements combined with a few instrumental vignettes make for an album that avoids the trap of monotony into which many other quiet, mellow bands fall. Song after song, O'Connell finds the correct piece of flair -- whether it be a sample, an instrument, or a vocal inflection -- to turn his singer-songwriter style into a record as interesting as it is unpredictable."