AP Track Review
The track Land of Dead by Montreal's Elephant Stone, the psyche pop creation of Rishi Dhir (vox, bass, sitar) and long-time collaborators Miles Dupire (drums) and Gab Lambert (guitar) sparkles with a decidedly shiny pop sound and at under 2 minutes (the hallmark of most punk songs not psychedelia) it plays (to me) like a theme song for a kid's psychedelic Saturday morning action show. You say psychedelia is not for kids (?), then you must not of seen the seemingly acid laden odd 60's and 70's kid's shows created by Sid and Marty Krofft. Someone was smoking or dropping something when they wrote H.R. Pufnstuf.
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Robb Donker
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
Montreal's Elephant Stone is the Polaris Music Prize-nominated psyche-pop creation of Rishi Dhir (vox, bass, sitar) and long-time collaborators Miles Dupire (drums) and Gab Lambert (guitar). Debuting in 2009, Elephant Stone has released 5 critically-acclaimed albums and toured extensively throughout North America and Europe and enjoyed significant success on US college/non-comm and Canadian commercial radio. As a highly-regarded sitar player, Dhir has also collaborated with indie rock icons (Beck) and legendary cult bands (The Brian Jonestown Massacre) and is a member of psych "super-group" MIEN (ft. members of The Horrors, The Black Angels).
Released in 2009 on Dhir’s Elephants on Parade Records (EOP), The Seven Seas garnered wide-spread acclaim culminating with a Polaris Music Prize long-list nomination that acknowledges the best full-length Canadian album. Produced by Jace Lasek (The Besnard Lakes), the album introduced Elephant Stone’s innovative blend of rock ‘n’ roll, Hindustani classical music, and infectious pop. The 2010 follow up, The Glass Box EP, expanded on the spirited sounds of The Seven Seas. Following its release, the band set out on their first North American tour supporting the Brian Jonestown Massacre.
In 2013 Elephant Stone released their third LP, Elephant Stone. The album received critical acclaim from NPR, Brooklyn Vegan, Consequence of Sound, and other prominent media outlets. It also contained Dhir’s finest batch of songs yet:including singles “Heavy Moon” and “Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin,” as well as the raga-drenched meditation, “A Silent Moment.” The band spent the next year touring throughout Europe and North America as a headliner and as support for The Zombies, The Black Angels (among others) and multiple festivals (Levitation Austin and France, Best Kept Secret, and so on).
A fourth album – The Three Poisons – followed in 2014. The darkly compelling and inventive album showcased Dhir’s lyrical exploration of Buddhist themes and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. The Three Poisons remix album – ES3PRMX – appeared in 2015 as a digital download. Anton Newcombe of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Tom Furse of The Horrors, Alex Maas of The Black Angels, Peter Holmström of The Dandy Warhols, and more contributed remixes.
In 2016 Elephant Stone released their fifth album, Ship of Fools, on Burger Records/EOP. Produced by Marcus Paquin (Arcade Fire), the album received high marks across the board and spawned two singles that charted on Canadian commercial radio (“Andromeda” and Manipulator”).
After taking time to explore new collaborations and sounds with MIEN, drone-spiked instrumentals with Acid House Ragas, and remixes for paisley underground legends The Dream Syndicate and french pop-auteurs Tahiti80, Dhir and Elephant Stone are back in 2019 with a new single, “Land Of Dead”. Clocking in at just under 2 minutes, “Land Of Dead” begins with the haunting strums of a sitar and then dives headfirst into “Paranoid”-era Black Sabbath riffage with Rishi intoning of a “land of fire”. Ending with a child’s lament of “goodbye blue skies, so long clean air...Do you even care?”, “Land Of Dead” is the foreboding soundtrack to a world undone by our own doing. PLAY LOUD.
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