International Pop Overthrow
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On his fifth visit to Chicago, in early 2000, he was detained for a few hours at customs, and realized he wouldn’t be able to pass as a mere tourist much longer. “If they get the feeling that you’re spending more time there than at home, and if they can make an argument that you’re living here, they reserve the right to kick you out,” he says. By that time he’d met and become friends with Nick Macri, who plays bass in Heroic Doses and Euphone and runs the small indie label Ohio Gold. Macri offered to release an album, which afforded Elkington a good shot at being granted an O-1 visa, which allows individuals of “extraordinary ability” to stay in the States for up to three years. He returned to London late last summer to wait for his application to be processed; he got his visa in January.
Elkington rerecorded a dozen of his best songs with engineer Greg Norman in his basement 16-track studio. The recording is stripped-down and direct; Elkington’s warm, understated singing, which will probably provoke comparisons to lonely genius Bill Callahan of Smog, elucidates modest melodies against Velvet Underground-esque strumming and crisp drumming. He puts the lyrics across with a certain bashfulness that probably corresponds with his initial reluctance to sing at all, but the intimate simplicity is quite appealing.
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