These United States - A Picture Of The Three Of Us At The Gate To The Garden Of Eden
Folk Gone Gonzo
Jesse Elliott is obsessed with perfection. Don’t let his laid back facade or the sounds of his long awaited LP (and memory tester) A Picture of the Three of Us at the Gate to the Garden of Eden persuade you differently. This is a man who may have single handedly reconfigured a new era of post-everything folk. Along with long time friend David Strackany (Paleo) under the street name of These United States, he may have also offered up one of the smartest soft spoken progressive revivals in some time.
Clocking in at just over a sitcom, Garden Of Eden is a swift wide eyed look at life, love, and kinship. A boy trapped in the body of a man, who plays his soul through a capo set of chords - whispering words of engaging quirks and forgoing its apocalyptic draw. Yes, Elliott is a dreamer, but what a fantasy world to be a part of. Fantastically graceful and equally penned ‘First Sight’ kicks its own basedrum to the psychedelic beat of folk turned on its head. Designed but honest, it’s a tune only the kin of a punk era’s wake can inscribe. Elliott knows his words and chooses them wisely when uttering the awkwardness of love, “Calculating the logistics of lust, of when unspoken things could happen between us.” To say he’s in the same ballpark as Tunng would be an understatement. His influences of Andrew Bird and Jonathan Rice are never more apparent than on quirky ‘Kings & Aces’ or the majestic ‘The Business’ with its off kilter quirks. Standout ‘So High So Low So Wide So Long’ is a grumble of instruments, a catastrophe of linguistics and possibly the best damn song on the album. The wood panel cuffs and dirty grinds along the sliding steel guitar prove he’s no longer a step child to the folk sounds of Jack Johnson but instead his own muddle of commotion and tranquility.
It may not always flow well, nor will it always be catchy - damned if it’s even perfect. But nearly if not all of it here is tremendous. For every obscenely unruffled track, there’s its contradicting counterpart just around the next turn. Anyone who’s been waiting to see how folk could be great once again could do no better than sampling the apples of Elliot’s Garden of Eden.
Sean Kendall
