Turning a decade-long friendship into a deadline-free collaboration, Matt Berninger (The National) and Brent Knopf (formerly of Menomena and current Ramona Falls main man) faced the daunting task of whittling over 450 of Knopf’s demos down to 11 fully formed songs.
Don't be fooled. EL VY (pronounced like a plural of Elvis, obviously) may have hit the funny button with their goofball videos and daft Instagram antics, but the pair's debut release runs the gamut of emotions. Described by Berninger as a record of "really personal things and a bunch of bad jokes", Return to The Moon finds common ground in a nostalgic, wry, white-collar angst while adding new shades to the duo's palette.
At its best Knopf’s intricate production stands shoulder to shoulder with Berninger’s abstract lyrics, the chords and syllables folding around each other and prodding art-rock into the pop realm. The title track’s guitar knots and funk rhythms set things up nicely, injecting an earworm tune into a song with oblique references to politics, family, alienation and loss.
I'm the Man to Be is even better, an overblown, megalomaniac pisstake inspired by Schoolboy Q's There He Go (which itself features a Knopf-penned Menomena sample). It overflows with striking images ("I'll be the one in the lobby in the collared fuck-me shirt. The green one" is Berninger at his best) and smart musical left turns.
The gorgeous Paul Is Alive playfully channels Berninger's Ohio youth and obsession with Californian punks The Minutemen, a theme that's developed on the pseudo-glam Need a Friend.
Still, a sparse, introverted atmosphere pervades proceedings. Songs drift into National-esque structures as Berninger's trademark wine-bleached baritone dominates No Time to Crank The Sun and It's a Game. It gets darker again when Knopf flexes his muscles with pulsating guitar crunches and brief bursts of noise on the companion pieces, Sad Case and Happiness, Missouri, and the existential intonations of "It's agony" that haunt Careless makes the album's earlier one-liners and in-jokes seem like a distant memory. This pairing drinks from a deep creative well. There's more to come from EL VY, begging the question: Where to next?
