ELF POWER WITH SPECIAL GUEST PEALDS

City Winery St. Louis presents Elf Power with Special Guest Pealds Live in concert, Friday, June 23rd at 8 PM.

Artificial countrysides” is the term Elf Power coined to describe the gray zones where the natural world collides with the creeping encroachment of the digital realm, where the balance between real and simulated can shift from one minute to the next. Artificial Countrysides is also the name of the Athens, Ga., band’s new album, their first since 2017 and their first for Yep Roc. It’s a collection of 12 spellbinding psych-laced songs that blur the line between traditional and futuristic while seeking to make sense of our relationship to each.

The idea behind the name of the album has a more concrete application, too. “That title also describes the songwriting process, of world-building or creating an artificial landscape within a song,” singer and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Rieger says. He and his Elf Power bandmates — drummer Peter Alvanos and guitarist Dave Wrathgabar, with contributions from keyboard player Laura Carter — have created some of the band’s most expansive musical terrain yet.

Artificial Countrysides pushes Elf Power’s music in unexpected directions that accentuate the psych-rock sound the band has been honing for close to 30 years. Along with a blend of fuzz-tone electric and layered acoustic guitars, Moog keyboards and lively drums, the group experimented with the sounds of marimba, Mellotron, harpsichord, synth bass and distorted drum machine loops, all topped with melodies that echo in your head long after the music stops. The effect is electrifying, on songs that are unmistakably from Elf Power, yet muscular and propulsive in a distinctive new way.