Written by Ruud Peters
The Great Glass Elephant, interesting title isn’t it ? The first thing that comes to mind reading or hearing these words is probably “careful!” or “watch out!” and that’s because you probably imagine a beautiful, but fragile, piece of art created in honour of one of the most fantastic and grand animals on the planet. Well, let me tell you; this freshman album is indeed a piece of art that has all the elements that will make you want to handle this album with care.
Eidola are five young men from Provo, Utah and they have created a sublime piece of work that will put your attention span to the test for more then an hour.
The first part of the album shows an exciting start with relatively short, up-tempo tracks where the band plays restless, rousing indie-rock with some post-rock and psychedelic rock influences. Music that, when played live, will easily fit in big stadiums due to its huge sound. One of the obvious influences here is The Mars Volta.
In the second part of ‘Argue’ however, the first signs of experiment are shining through. The music suddenly changes to calm, atmospheric, almost ambient-like soundcapes.
‘Yahrzeit Homily’ has a similar change halfway but the guys then flow in some wild psychedelic rock. This is the prelude for the ultimate Jim Morrison homage ‘Bastard’s Fire’, a bluesy heavy rock piece that also has a nod to The Cult.
We then have come to the more experimental part of the album where Eidola enters their more imaginative, sometimes dreamy side although they keep using a variety in both musical as vocal approaches. And yes; shattering screams, or ‘unclean vocals’ as the band calls them, included. What stays is their unmistakably feel for melody and a great layered sound.
The last bunch of tracks, starting with ‘The Alchemist And The Architect’ are my favourites. These very well crafted tracks are charged with different emotions, from aggressive to introspective.
In an interview Daily Herald did with Andrew Wells, singer and guitarist, last year he said that the band “looks at music like an abstract piece of art” and that they “want to make music that's based on inference, that's interpretable." And I can fully agree with that.
The absolute epic peak of the album is the track with the beautiful title 'The Golden Rule Is, There Is No Golden Rule’. After a slow, ballad-like start this piece evolves into a wild and freaky, but above all; triumphant and catchy tune with impressive harmony vocals and loud postrock inspired guitars.
‘Ours’, the following track is a complete instrumental piece of music that slowly builds on ambient and post-rock sounds and ultimately catches the theme of ‘The Golden Rule..’
The musical journey ends with the introspective ‘What Lies Beneath The Mountains’, a calm but dark ambient piece with spacy sounds of astronauts communicating.
With The Great Glass Elephant Eidola presents an honest, rewarding and spiritual debut album with music divided in 12 versatile tracks, full of emotions. And if you buy their LP at Bandcamp you’ll get some beautiful physical artwork as well, so you can even cherish the LP-cover as an ornament on your mantelpiece - besides the elephant of course.
