Elevator Division

Elevator Division are what UK dream-rockers Elbow would have sounded like had they grown up in the American Midwest and been reared on a steady diet of hamburgers, football and middle-of-nowhere alienation. Like their contemporaries from across the pond, these four snappily-dressed Missourians play big, sprawling indie rock replete with dark atmospheric passages, reverb-drenched guitars and keening, woebegone moans, only with a little extra grit and toughness. For once, a band from America’s breadbasket emotes passionately without plucking lyrics straight from the tear-stained pages of their junior high Trapper Keepers. Switching up their majestic, glacial drones with crisp, scrappy indie rock rhythms, Elevator Division keep the epic-length noodling to a minimum. Singer James Hoskins delivers swooning jeremiads of broken hearts and post-millennial ennui in a marvellous Jeff Buckley-like wail while bass notes rumble, cymbals crash and staccato stabs of guitar ring out from the inky blackness. In the opening "October,” he rejoices in the barren greyness of a mid-autumn rainstorm as the band slowly works itself up from a doleful mope-fest into a soaring dirge-rock lather. And while their little world seems perpetually overcast, Elevator Division’s rainy day music is worth staying indoors for.