Shrunken Elvis :: S/T
Photo: badnewsblaire
It’s always exciting and humbling to hear that something esoteric and explosively experimental in music is happening just down the road from you. Tennessee may not entirely be on your radar for the free-flowing jams, aside from the epic events of Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival that takes place every year in March, or Elvis Presley’s LSD infused 1965 classic “Edge of Reality.” Still, there has always been a harmonious and healthy response, as well as intense interest in the elements of free jazz and mind-blowing melodies, here in Middle Tennessee. Some that immediately come to mind are the cosmic collective The Cherry Blossoms (FMRL), lo-fi trailblazer R. Stevie Moore, the self-sustaining sounds from the Jowdorosky worship quartet Holy Mountain Top Removers, and Rich Ruth, who's not only a member of the Nashville-based trio Shrunken Elvis, but a sonic soloist whose work can be found deep in the swelling depths of Derek Bailey’s dormant dreams. A supergroup, if you would, that consists of members Sean Thompson (Sean Thompson’s Weird Ears/Margo Price), Michael Ruth (Rich Ruth), and Spencer Cullum (Echolalia), whose careers as solo musicians outside of the exploratory ecosystem of the newly formed project have gained them wide acclaim amongst their peers, have joined together to effortlessly establish something truly unique and universally uninterrupted by the heavy distractions of the world’s complicated challenges. Or maybe it’s all just some poetic product of the times, or a radical response to the maniacs of the matrix. Whatever it may be, it’s absolutely needed and totally tempting, the trepidatious tones of our society in the most creatively cerebral way possible.
Photo: badnewsblaire
Alright, let’s break this album apart and see what sonic secrets lie dormant in its crystallized crevices and catacombs. Quickly establishing a polished philosophy of “no goals, just ideas,” the group’s origins came about while touring Europe back in 2022 in support of Cullum’s solo record, where the guys began communicating with their tour setup of guitars, pedal steel, and synth, while simultaneously conjuring the experimental elements of Eno, Tangerine Dream, and Harmonia, to name a few. Shrunken Elvis released their self-titled debut back in early September on the Austin, TX-based label Western Vinyl, and have since carved a place in sonic stone for their feverish findings amongst the rich “Kosmische Musik,” influenced tones, and textures riddled in the band’s DNA. While providing a lush and ludic landscape of space-aged sounds and carefully contemplative calls out into the never-ending abyss, the trio leaves a trail of sourdough breadcrumbs behind so you, the listener, can find your way back to planet Earth after a visceral voyage into the unknown. Across the album’s 9 tracks of ritualistic space jams, and breathtaking temptations into the dark corners of the mind, a nocturnal narrative takes place against the galactic glow of the melodic moon from some cosmic cave hidden in a mountain in Middle Tennessee, which can be heard from any country, continent, and county if you press your ear up close enough to the pulsating perimeters of the band’s metallic craft.
Featuring numbers like “An Old Outlet,” the album’s oscillating opener “That There’s A Strategy,” and “A Broken Cat,” Shrunken Elvis isn’t just a “supergroup,” but an esoteric equation that only its members know the alchemical answer to. And as students in society, our responsibility is to stand by as they eagerly excavate their findings and share them with the world during its iconic infancy in understanding anything other than profit, destruction, and meaningless moments not spent listening to bands such as Shrunken Elvis.
