Elf Energy

Vainly Clutching at Phantom Limbs

Orange Twin

Jul 24, 2023
Fall 2001 – Grandaddy

By Frank Valish

Recorded in 1994 and launched a yr later, Vainly Clutching at Phantom Limbs was the debut album from Athens’ Elf Energy. Many of the devices have been performed by songwriter Andrew Rieger and recorded on his 4-track. Mates lent cello and guitar on one tune, and drums on one other, however apart from that, Vainly Clutching at Phantom Limbs was Rieger’s child, his first foray right into a profession that may span 14 albums and proceed to today. Orange Twin has now repressed the album onto vinyl, with an added bonus of the band’s 1996 EP, The Winter Hawk.

One would possibly anticipate, given the circumstances of the recording and the youthfulness of the Elf Energy challenge on the whole, that Vainly Clutching at Phantom Limbs would possibly endure from these components in listening virtually 30 years later. And it’s true, that the album is lo-fi compared to Elf Energy’s future works. Rieger acknowledges himself in a brand new essay featured within the liner notes that Elf Energy’s debut was primarily a solo challenge of a songwriter lastly capable of get the concepts in his head down; he didn’t actually have a true band but.

What’s outstanding about listening to this album virtually 30 years on is how absolutely shaped the thought of Elf Energy is. By the band’s sophomore launch, 1997’s When the Pink King Comes, Rieger had assembled a grouping of like-minded people to encompass him and assist flesh out his concepts, and as such, When the Pink King Comes is an exponentially extra expansive work. Elf Energy was by then absolutely entrenched into the Elephant 6 Recording Firm collective, with the incestuous interaction of musicians throughout bands and albums. However actually the one distinction is that Vainly Clutching at Phantom Limbs is extra lo-fi, a undeniable fact that maybe makes the album much more charming. Comprised of Rieger originals, together with a Dwarves cowl (“Drug Retailer”) and a Robyn Hitchcock cowl (the beguilingly fucked up tackle “Surgical procedure”), the album options the entire quasi-psychedelic feels and enchanting melodies which have characterised all of Elf Energy’s finest work. And regardless of the relative bed room nature of the recordings, Rieger nonetheless manages to interject devices comparable to organ and flute, the latter that includes within the hypnotic “Round Malevolence.”

Even by the point of the stopgap The Winter Hawk EP, initially launched between albums one and two, Rieger had expanded his environment, together with different musicians taking part in drums, bass, violin, saxophone, flute, accordion, and synthesizer. However Vainly Clutching at Phantom Limbs is the place it began. It’s fantastic to have the album again in print on vinyl. And with the EP included as a 7”, it represents the definitive view of the beginnings of a songwriter and a band that may proceed to fulfill for many years. (www.elfpower.com)

Creator score: 7.5/10