Album Review: Egg Leggs/ELEP

“In early 2011 Egg Leggs was born. Even though they didn’t have an official band name until while in studio, they kept their priorities straight and continued making music. The first few months were rough trying to find their niche, locking themselves in a five foot by five foot room working for hours. Through the early stress and beginning foundation their sound finally found itself.” This is what Egg Leggs wrote to describe themselves, and after listening to their first album, “ELEP”, it’s easy to hear the obvious passion for what they are producing, and also the rough edges that come along with a young band making an album quickly. There are definite signs of inspiration, and Egg Leggs is certainly a very musically playful band that isn’t afraid to grab influence from any genre that they feel speaks to them to try and craft truly original and inventive songs with some success.

ELEP opens with a slick vocal sample accompanied by stripped down stuttering drums that pulse organically and have just the right amount of space left for the vocalist, who has a very versatile, albeit unconventional voice which is capable of punk-inspired shouts, falsetto crooning, Isaac Brock style sing-talking, and a fairly wide emotional range. It’s one of the best elements of Egg Leggs and in the first track the vocals get to shine and the lead singer shows some excellent nuance. After settling into the smooth electronic post-punk sound Egg Leggs transitions to an alternative indie rock sound more similar to The Shins than Modest Mouse, and from there continues to jump between styles; punk, electronic, indie alternative, folky blues, and straight progressive rock. The whole experience is very modern and well composed, with the transitions feeling intentional and gave me high hopes for this album.

Unfortunately my hopes were dashed quickly by the next track which felt slapped together. Between the reggae inspired bass line and the early 70’s psychedelic guitar riff very little musical elements felt as originally inspired as the first track. The vocals still sparkle in their own unique way, breaking the mundane smoothness with emotional rawness, but the structure of the track is fairly uninspired, which was quite a let-down from the first song which really felt unique and complex.

From there the album continues down this more traditionally structured path, with songs that rarely vary from conventional structures and don’t have quite the cohesiveness or originality of the first track. There are however some real moments of inspiration to be discovered in most of the remaining tracks. Bridges features nice falsetto singing with the strained exasperated yelling coming in and out. New American Dogma was actually a very enjoyable track in the style of Modest Mouse or Bright Eyes circa 2002, even though there is nothing really new in this track musically or instrumentally.

The final track Anagnorisis finally breaks the pattern of non-progressing music, although it travels in very safe directions, with an anthem like quality to it. The track has a nice guitar riff, although it never reaches the heights it could have, given the space it was granted in the song. It’s somewhat reminiscent of something Annie Clark might choose for her guitar solos which is most assuredly a good thing. It’s an ending to an album that leaves me with more questions than answers. The first song feels like a true fusion of ideas and the ending guitar track shows that there is substantial creative potential; however in the middle are some very stale choices and ideas that feel half-baked.

The production is good and these are clearly solid musicians. Lyrically it seemed to me that Legg Eggs is wanting to weave a web of sneering cynicism, and they succeed in capturing the spirit of this if not the content with lines like “And I am blackened by false truth.”, and “Disappearing friends mean nothing if they’re running from the ones that they love.”. The issue here is that the content is missing. With lines like these I’m expecting a revelation about man, or at least about the songwriter to follow, but I don’t feel that depth or investment here. In some tracks it seems like the vocalist is rambling, or at least not choosing his words precisely.

This feels to me like a young band that has room to grow, but as they advance in their musicianship and songwriting abilities they have the potential to make a really important album. With its genre-fusing style, and sometimes raw emotion, there are moments of ELEP that are truly captivating, and there is a sense that the fractured nature of its composition makes a statement on the nature of musical genres being constantly in flux.

Overall though this is a great first entry, and I’m exciting to see what they do next.

You can find Egg Leggs full album here: http://eggleggs.bandcamp.com/album/elep

70/100