Why They Don't Agree With The Label They've Been Given

Elder are making music for themselves, and no one else.

This is the modus operandi laid down when they set out to create their latest offering, Lore. Taking a cleaner - and clearer - approach to their third full-length release, they’ve found a middle ground between the deep and heavy psyche of Deep Roots Stirring (2011) and their stoner-riffed 2008 self-titled debut. But they also took some new risks—according to frontman Nick DiSalvo.

“We took some big departures from our previous releases,” he says. “It really paid off, I think. For this album and for all subsequent releases, the mantra of the band is really all about listening to ourselves above everything else. Writing music that is interesting to us first and foremost, and not shying away from trying anything. None of us are stoner rock or doom fans above any other genre. We listen to much more than just rock’n’roll in general, and it’s sometimes frightening to let those influences shine through when your fanbase praises you based upon your more derivative releases. However, the fun in playing music for us three has always been about expressing ourselves. So we had to just strip those filters about others perceptions away and just write music the way we wanted to.”

And they’ve been quick with this album to distance themselves from being a ‘doom band’ - a tag given to them liberally by media over their last few releases. “I don’t really think Elder has ever been specifically a ‘doom band’,” DiSalvo explains. “We’ve always had inspirations and influences from a lot of rock genres. We’ve started intentionally distancing ourselves from that tag, along with ‘stoner rock’ for a number of reasons—mostly because we don’t think much about the style of music we play, but just try to write music. Those titles aren’t pejorative and we listen to a lot of doom and stoner rock, but I think our fanbase comes from a lot of different musical backgrounds and it’s just unnecessarily limiting.”

Lore was recorded with Justin Pizzoferranto, who worked with the Boston trio on their Spires Burn (2012) EP. Chosen for his diverse back catalogue, which includes producing acts like Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth and the Pixies, DiSalvo says they asked him to help bring a “…more modern rock’n’roll sound” to this album. “We wanted the sound to be straightforward with clean and big production,” he says.

“We knew he could do that for us. Justin’s place is in an old mill out in the hills and so it’s a perfectly serene and concentrated place to record a record with very little distraction aside from the landscapes of the area. Justin is a fan of all kinds of music - he’s got eclectic taste just as much as we all do - so his own ideas concerning recording techniques and experimenting with different parts was a big advantage in guiding the production.” 

Originally published in X-Press Magazine