Athens-Bred Elf Power Brings Otherworldly Sound to Augusta
“W
e’ve played the Soul Bar once before,” says Elf Power vocalist Andrew Rieger. “It was great. I think we played there on a weekend night. There were a good many people there who knew who we were.” And what about those who showed up just for a round or two of drinks? “A lot of them seemed to enjoy it quite a lot,” says Rieger. That’s not surprising, judging from the song samples on their Web site, www.elfpower.com. The band has a talent for crafting catchy melodies that seem to pick you up and carry you right along with them. “There’s a lot of kind of weird, vague, dreamlike imagery in the lyrics,” Rieger says. “There is some supernatural imagery. It’s not exactly like the lizard battling the hawk lord. It’s not a Dungeons and Dragons scenario. There’s a little bit of supernatural, but it’s not so much in straight narrative storytelling.” As to just where Elf Power’s imagery comes from, Rieger speculates, “I guess when I was growing up, I read a lot of comic books and a lot of sci-fi. Also, a lot of other musicians, songwriters that I really respect, that have maybe influenced me, do a lot of similar things.” In tribute to some of those musicians, Elf Power’s latest album, “Nothing’s Going To Happen,” is a collection of covers. “Most of
them are fairly obscure,” Rieger says. “We do some David Bowie; and let’s see, we do some T. Rex; we do some punk songs; we do Bad Brains and stuff like that, which isn’t really what our music sounds like, but it’s kind of fun to play live. “I think a lot of bands tend to look down on other bands that do covers because they think it somehow takes away from their originality,” he says. “But I don’t know, it’s fun for us. We kind of consider it a tribute to people we respect, songs that we love.” Expect Elf Power to have fun playing the songs off “Nothing’s Going To Happen” Saturday night at the Soul Bar. “We have five albums out, so we like to play a little bit from each album, mostly concentrating on the newer stuff,” says Rieger. Rieger, who spoke with The Spirit by phone from Wilmington, Del., says that Augusta will be the last stop on Elf Power’s latest tour. “Then we’re home for about 10 days and then we go to Europe for a month. “This will be our third time over there. We have a licensing deal with a European label, and the label’s based in Oxford and then they license it out to other countries. It’s worked out pretty good for us.” But Europe isn’t the most exotic locale Elf Power has played in; the group’s played in Japan as well. “That was probably the most alien culture that we’ve encountered,” says
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Rieger. “Even in Europe, a lot of people speak English. It’s somewhat Westernized. Japan was something completely different, and the fans were completely appreciative over there.” And while the name Elf Power sounds like some sort of catch phrase translated from a Japanese cartoon, legend has it the band’s moniker was adopted in their hometown, Athens. “The story behind the name was that I was walking downtown one day in downtown
Athens, and I saw ‘Elf Power’ written in the concrete, like someone had written in it when it was wet,” Rieger says. But strangely, the next time he passed that spot, the writing was no longer there. “Maybe it was some sort of hallucination,” he laughs. Dances With Wolves and Tenderness take the stage before Elf Power at 10:30 p.m. and 11 p.m., respectively. Elf Power starts their set at midnight.
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