The Elephant Visual Album

When I trace my musical history back to its origins, there are four or five key discoveries from my childhood that have gone on to become foundational cornerstones of my taste. I’ve written about many of them here from my first iPod and 2006 pop music to entire genres that I stumbled into by accident all thanks to people with better taste than me. I measure my life with music, and these events have all become part of my personal mythology; milestones that have gone on to inform not only my taste, but who I am as a person.

I was fortunate enough to grow up with a dad who cared about music. While that mostly relegated itself to me raiding his CD collection to rip classic rock albums onto my iPod, there were also a small handful of (then) modern bands that we bonded over as I began to show an interest in music. The shared section of our musical Venn Diagram has expanded over the years as my taste has continued to mature, grow, and spiral in unexpected ways, but the first “new” band my Dad and I found common ground with was none other than The White Stripes. 

Luckily, because my dad loved The White Stripes, this meant I had the band’s entire discography at my fingertips. He owned their studio albums, B-sides, singles, live albums, demos, side projects, you name it. As a result, I have a worryingly-deep connection to (and knowledge of) Jack White’s musical catalog.

Around this same time, I was also taking guitar lessons. Aside from the standard “starter” songs like “Smoke On The Water” and “Pipeline,” The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” proved to be low-hanging, easy-playing fruit for a 10-year-old Taylor. Between borrowing the CDs and playing the songs, I showed enough of an interest that my dad decided to take me to see the group on tour in 2003 for my second concert ever. 

While I’ll admit that the 1.5-decade marination time of nostalgia plays a huge part in it, Elephant remains one of my favorite albums of that genre, this era, and my entire life. Hits and overplayed singles aside, there’s a lot to love about Elephant, and there’s a reason it remains the band’s most enduring release this many years later. 

Literally every track on Elephant hits. “Seven Nation Army” is an unparalleled anthem of the early-2000’s. “Hardest Button to Button” bears one of the best drumlines of the decade. “Ball and Biscuit” is one of my favorite songs of all time with its lumbering blues riff that slowly erupts into blistering guitar solos. There isn’t a wasted moment or an unpolished idea. Elephant is rock in its purest form. A feeling that can’t quite be put into words made by two people with two instruments. Perfect.

As eye-opening as Elephant was, sometimes your favorite albums can slide into the background of your life without you ever noticing. New music, other mediums, or life events can keep you from venturing back, and as embarrassing as it is to admit, this had absolutely happened to me with The White Stripes. It’s almost like taking art for granted. I’d listened to Elephant so many times, heard “Seven Nation Army” in so many different movies and TV shows and commercials that at a certain point it just kind of feels like “well, yeah, everyone knows this album is great, so what’s the point?” 

While my relationship with Elephant is ongoing, a chance encounter with a designer completely renewed my love for the record with a project that was crafted as lovingly as the album itself. Sometimes the classics are not only worth revisiting, but worth diving into on a microscopic level, and that’s exactly what Chandler Cort did with this beloved album. 

Creating what he calls a “visual album” Chandler transposed Elephant onto a 9-foot scroll that tracks the entire record second-by-second. Interpreting each instrument’s volume and the exact starting point for every word sung, Chandler’s creation is one-of-a-kind and unlike anything I’ve ever seen before in my life. There’s something to be said for standing face-to-face with one of your favorite records and taking in the entire thing as it towers above you.

While it’s impossible to translate the feeling of interacting with the scroll itself, I wanted to share this beautiful and original piece of art with as many people as possible. Not only was Chandler kind enough to let me share his incredible work on Swim Into The Sound, but he also sat down with me to talk about the process that went into making it as well as his personal background with the band. So without further adieu, I’m excited to present The Elephant Visual Album. 

Full-resolution PDF version of the Elephant Visual Album at the end of the article.
 

The Visual Album and Its Creator: An Interview With Chandler Cort

Much like Taylor, I have a very distinct memory of my introduction to the White Stripes. I came to the party very late, as my parents found it borderline impossible to break away from anything outside of the typical 60’s - 80’s hits they grew up with.

There aren’t many specific events in my life that I would refer to as “life-changing,” but hearing “Rag and Bone” for the first time in my high school art class was absolutely one of them. My obsession with the White Stripes began with Icky Thump and worked its way back to the very beginning of the group’s discography until I had completely immersed myself in everything they had ever produced. The White Stripes were something I listened to exclusively for months. When I wasn’t listening to them, I found myself watching interviews with the members, reading about their history, and completely immersing myself in the group’s mythology. I had never quite felt myself become so taken by a band before.

Six years later, the White Stripes are still one of my favorite bands, if not my all-time favorite. Jack and Meg White have taken hold of a very big piece of my heart, and I don’t know if that will ever be able to be eclipsed.

The way the project really came about was kind of funny. I was in my first infographics class at Portland State University, and we were told to make a timeline for our first project. The professor made sure he kept things very open-ended, so we had the choice to do an incredibly accurate historical timeline, or we could do something more whimsical like a timeline of the Harry Potter Universe.

I remember going on break one day listening to Elephant, and thinking “it would be funny to do an infographic on the number of times Jack White goes, ‘WOO!’ in one album.” So that’s where it really kinda started. I refined my guidelines a little bit further and decided that I would track the main instruments: guitar, drums, and piano, as well as the vocals. 

The process for this piece is something I feel just as proud of as the actual work itself. All of my research for this project was done entirely audibly. I printed all of the lyrics to every song, and I would sit down at my desk every day, listen to the song, and get the second-by-second timestamps for every lyric, and then go back through, and repeat the same process for the guitar, drums, and piano. This means I listened to every song at least three or four times in full, not counting pausing, rewinding, and playing again to make sure the time signatures were as accurate as possible.

In addition to the individual instrument timelines, each song also got a “genre gauge” that I had designed too. Because Elephant is such a diverse album, I feel like it was very important to describe how each song was different in comparison to the others. Every song was ranked on a scale of punk, blues, folk, and pop, with the end result being a circular graph that represented the track’s sonic texture. 

This was then translated into a second graph that I constructed to help best visualize the album in its entirety. I’d guess this project took somewhere between 40-45 hours total. It was truly a monster, which can be seen in the final 9-inch by 9-foot print. I remember people telling me in class that I was doing was ridiculous, and that I was crazy for even attempting something like this, which honestly just kind of pushed me to do it even more.

A lot of my design work has been very music-focused, and I have done very intense pieces about other albums I love, but I feel like this one is probably the most accessible, and the most interesting. I describe this piece as a visual album because I feel like it is the most literal visual translation of an auditory piece. I’m so happy that this piece has received the reaction it has, and I’m incredibly thankful that Taylor was moved enough to offer me this opportunity, and I hope to be here again someday. 

Until then everyone, be good, and love what you listen to.

To see the Elephant Visual Album in its full hi-res glory click here.

Custom – Brace For Impact | Album Review

Genres don’t mean a whole lot in 2018. Indie is an umbrella, everything is “alternative,” and nothing is truly popular. Genres have become overly-broad concepts used to categorize music in order to give new listeners a primer for what an album will sound like. One of the many reasons why the importance of genres has been lessened is that they rarely ever encapsulate an artist’s actual range. It’s rare that a band will be fully committed to one genre, in all likelihood they have a wide variety of influences, styles, and nuances that all exist somewhere between the inherently-broad lines of genre categories. 

Perhaps because of this grey area, it’s all the more refreshing when a band commits. I mean really commits. Custom is a rock band, full-stop. Hailing from Seattle, this quintet of musicians is committed to making straight-up Rock music with a capital “R.” No frills, no fuss, and no distractions, just rock. Custom’s fourth album Brace For Impact is nearly upon us, and it wastes no time jumping straight into the action. 

Within seconds, opening track “No Regrets” bowls the listener over with a shredding guitar riff that offers little time for recovery. Soon the bass and drums jump into the mix, laying down a hard-charging rhythm that paves the way for lead singer David Lyon’s entrance. Painting a picture of a carefree, hedonistic youth, the song works its way up to an anthemic chorus that sounds downright Bruce Dickinson-esque.

As much as Brace For Impact is steeped in “rock,” the band is able to tackle a wide range of vastly-different topics within the album’s 29-minute running time. Things get cerebral on “Drugstore Prophet” as the group tackles the dangers of the pharmaceutical industry in between powerful rolling choruses. Meanwhile “Lonely Girl” is a personal track that zooms down to a micro level depicting one person’s escape from depression, abuse, and personal strife. Similarly, “15 To Life” offers a four-minute vignette of a reformed criminal that climaxes with a sorrowful guitar solo and a vocal performance that drips with lament. 

The penultimate track “On Me” is a late-album highlight that also serves as the album’s lead single. Available as a free download from the group’s Bandcamp page, the song is an ode to the rockstar life featuring a dexterous bassline, fast-paced drumming, and a high-flying guitar solo. All of this is wrapped around a catchy chorus that evokes equal parts Asteroid and Buckcherry for a memorable and hard-drinking rock song. 

With hundreds of live shows under their belt, over a decade of experience, and soon four albums, Brace For Impact makes it clear that Custom is steadfast in their mission. Embodying everything about the rock and roll lifestyle, Custom's upcoming album is adventurous, boisterous, and most importantly: fun. It’s rock music that explodes with life from its first seconds until its last notes. It’s everything the genre was built on, and that’s sadly a rarity in 2018.

Levant – Beneath Rubble, Run Rivers Red | Album Review

At some point every creative has the same dream: take all of your closest friends, rent out a studio, and seclude yourselves from society while creating purely-communal art. There’s something eternally-appealing about being able to create whatever you want, whenever you want, and however you want. The concept of living off your own creativity is the end game for pretty much every artist, even if it means you’re just scraping by. 

Much like communism, the “purest” form of these collaborative projects are rarely ever achieved, and even less often do they produce anything that sees the light of day. There are rare outliers like The Desert Sessions, and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy that have become success stories, but more often than not, this style of creative incubation is a process that thrives in theory but fails in practice. Even with all of the ways that collaborative albums can fall apart, UK-based metal collective Levant has managed to craft an album that’s worthy not only of being added to this impressive list, but proof that this model can work.

Levant began in 2014 as less of a band and more of a code name for a studio project created by Nick Hutson. Levant’s “debut album” initially started life as an anti-war record, but soon became a highly-collaborative piece that brought in multiple artists all working together to create one release under Hutson’s direction. Now four years in the making Beneath Rubble, Run Rivers Red is almost here, and the hard work has paid off into something wholly unique, constantly-varied, and incredibly-well-polished.

From the first seconds of the album, Beneath Rubble captures the listener’s attention with a George W. Bush pull-quote from a 2005 address:

“The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else.”

With this sample (and its modern context) fresh in the listener's mind, a distorted guitar immediately juts into the mix, punctuating the end of this sentence and making way for pounding cannon drums. This instrumental onslaught is accompanied by a new sample, not from politics, but pop culture in the form of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. 

“Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people! Now let us fight! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!”

While this Chaplin quote lies relatively quietly underneath the propulsive instrumentation, it provides an immediate juxtaposition to the album’s opening moments, casting a stark political contrast over the remainder of the album.

After these scene-setting samples, singer JJ Jackson (of The Bastard Sons) takes over vocal duties, barreling into the track headfirst with the album’s first throat-shredding lyrics. Alternating between low growls and piercing screams with each line, Jackson jumps between two vastly-different vocal styles at a whiplash pace. It’s an absolutely breathtaking feat to witness, and a hell of an introduction to the album. 

Second track “Carry Me Home” also serves as the album’s lead single, a hard-drinking song with a southern metal bent and vocals helmed by Johnny Mennell of The Family Ruin. Vastly different from the first song in tone, style, and delivery, “Carry Me Home” lets the listener know early on that they won’t be hearing the same thing twice on this album.

Once the third track begins, it’s clear how well the collaborative gambit paid off for Levant on Beneath Rubble. Songs jump back and forth between different vocalists, styles, and subgenres, all while still feeling cut from the same cloth. There are soaring vocals, bombastic drumming, machine gun guitarwork, and sharp bass lines, all wrapped up in clean production and immaculate melodies. Song topics range from political to interpersonal, but it all adds up to a record that feels ever-changing yet singular thanks to Hutson’s vision.

While metalcore fans will feel right at home within the first track, Beneath Rubble also pulls off an unexpectedly-wonderful feat of softening over time. Despite beginning with such a searing and acidic political song, the album gradually eases the listener into a vast array of different styles that get softer as the album goes on. This becomes most apparent on the fifth song “A Perfect Picture” which is a borderline pop-punk ballad that sees Johnny Mennell sharing vocal duties with Christine Schneider for a heartfelt duet.

There are dozens of compelling moments scattered all throughout Beneath Rubble that are worthy of their own breakdown. From rumbling southern guitar metal on “Say Whatever You Like” to crashing cymbals on “The Darkness in Me,” every instrument and collaborator gets a moment to shine somewhere on the album. There’s a monstrous riff throughout “Silenced” that lead up to a volcanic scream, and a crushing chorus on “Draw The Line” that’s still stuck in my head, but these are just a few moments that felt particularly affirming throughout my multiple listens.

This all leads up to album closer “Time To Shine” which provides some roundabout bookending as pieces of Carl Segan’s “Pale Blue Dot” monologue is sprinkled throughout a glittering, distant, and ornate piano line. Reminiscent of the now-famous Great Dictator x Inception mashup that went viral nearly one decade ago, “Time To Shine” makes the listener feel at once infinitesimal and triumphant. A goosebump-inducing reminder of humanity’s scope in the grand scheme of things. 

The album ends on a holistic note of hope. A reminder that we’re all more similar than we give each other credit for. That the shared experience of existence bonds us, and that’s something to celebrate. That universality is a reason to love and be loved, not tear each other apart. And that’s a message we need in 2018 more than ever. 

Every band is a collaborative effort, but Beneath Rubble, Run Rivers Red is a testament to the spirit of collaboration. It’s 11 tracks and 39 minutes of concrete proof that sometimes working toward a shared vision pays off in spades. 

Beneath Rubble, Run Rivers Red is set for pre-release on 6th August and will be officially released across all major streaming platforms from 3rd September.

Dirk Schwenk & The Truth – Along the Road | EP Review

The cover of Dirk Schwenk’s Along The Road depicts a single pickup truck driving down a solitary stretch desert road at sunset. The sun is burning out over the mountains in the distance, turning the sky a mixture of pink and orange. It’s a pretty sight, but once the listener clicks play on Along The Road, they’re soon going to realize how perfectly that image captures the experience of listening to the album. 

Opening track “Table Set For Two” sets the mood for the rest of the record, depicting a slowly-mounting tale of infidelity. The narrative songwriting is powerful, walking the listener through the discovery, but stopping just short of Mark Kozelek before erupting into a soulful Eagles-esque guitar solo.  

Follow-up track “The River” is a picturesque flash of natural beauty, featuring a twangy banjo, delicate female vocals, and lush earthy imagery. It’s the musical equivalent of a vacation; kicking back at a warm, relaxing spot that seems to be made just for you. 

From there, the album’s back-half hits the listener with a trio of affectionate and earnest songs that range from groovy love ballads to patriotic celebration. 

While Along the Road is only comprised of five tracks stretched across 20 minutes, the release is short, sweet, and leaves the listener wanting more, which is always a good position to be in. Overall, the album is a fun country outing with the transportive ability to carry the listener to that beautiful desert at sunset, even if it’s just for 20 minutes. 

The Mezcaltones – The Mezcaltones Second | Album Review

You’ve just crossed the border into Mexico. You’ve been driving for hours without a break. You’re tired, thirsty, and sick of cacti. As the sun sets, you pull off into a roadside truckstop that looks like they pour a stiff drink. You make your way to the bar, order a drink, and settle in just as the house band begins to take the stage. That band is The Mezcaltones.

Hailing from Sydney, Australia, The Mezcaltones are a six-piece rock group creating hard-drinkin’ southern music fit for a spaghetti western film. Inspired by the style of Tarantino and Robert Rodrigues, the band’s sophomore record The Mezcaltones Second would sound right at home in a southern bar populated by vampires and criminals on the run. 

Album opener “For a Few Dollar More / Good The Bad and The Ugly (The Spaghetti Medley)” interpolates the iconic Sergio Leone score for a spellbinding introduction that eases the listener into the album with a sense of familiarity. As images of cowboy ponchos and tumbleweeds float through the air, things kick into high gear on “I Know My Rider” where frontman Don Too takes center stage for an intoxicating love song.

Other standout tracks include the rumbling “Short Change Hero” and “Na Na Na” which sports a catchy and fast-moving female chorus. Album closer “Let Love Reign” is a solo-laden rock track with shredding guitar, passionate vocals, and a long, celebratory outro. 

The Mezcaltones Second is an album of pure southern adoration, made for drinking tequila and speeding down deserted highways.