The enigmatic dreamchild. The delicious atrocity. The sinuous barbaric tomato furor that is
Elysian Fields.
It all started on a dark and stormy night. It was April in downtown New York City.The year was 1990. He wore a beat up shark skin suit, frayed at the cuffs.
He was looking for a match, or maybe he was just looking for some air. His set was over. Another empty night playing for drunken fools. He wandered down the dusty stairs, down to the basement of the squalid club at 47 East Houston Street. There she was. The little match girl, in a torn vintage eyelet dress with a black velvet bow. An old splintery broom in her hands. He must have heard that voice first, smokey, like warm honey. She was singing some forgotten song from the 1920s, as she dreamily and ineffectively tried to sweep the floor. He stood and watched her, this little anachronistic siren, as he cravenly sucked up the poison of yet another cigarette. Little did they know, but this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Eventually these two started putting their sounds together. It was something like jazz. They were joined by some heavy cats from the downtown scene, in their cool but short lived group
The Bedtime Band. The band started to take on interesting mutations, the more they would write. A strange and stunning hybrid developed, that would ultimately be the tongue of Elysian Fields.
Their first show under the name
Elysian Fields, was at the Mercury Lounge in 1995. They unforgivingly left their love marks on the underground music scene, quickly winning a devoted cult following with their enchanting live performances. After their second show they had a record deal,
snapped up by Radioactive Records during the giddy Nirvana-era industry gold rush. They stayed with Radioactive for about three years, putting out an e.p.,
"Elysian Fields", and the long player,
"Bleed Your Cedar", which garnered great critical acclaim and was hailed as an extraordinary debut. They supported these records with tours in the U.S. and in Europe, especially finding kindred spirits in France, coincidentally the place their CD was available. Eventually they recorded a second full length CD, made in Chicago with the incorruptible
Steve Albini at the board. But the label was now facing the dawning Neo-Mousketeer future, and wanted something with more mass appeal, they were less then thrilled with the bands unsettling Chicago bastard. But the band wouldn't abort it. After a long stalemate, they were released from the deal.
Left to their own devices, they recorded a bit for
John Zorn's label -
"Life's a Gas" for his
Marc Bolan compilation, and
"Les Amours Perdues", which appeared on the
Serge Gainsbourg one. That tune was used by
Lea Pool in her fine film,
"Emporte Moi". They also wrote and performed a few original song settings of
Edgar Allan Poe poems, as part of some gothic Halloween evenings with impresario and producer
Hal Willner.
And all the while they continued to write for a third album, and in 2000, they went in the studio for
Jetset records. The band holed up for two weeks in Brooklyn with co-producers
Good and Evil, and the result was
"Queen of the Meadow". The CD has been doing very well on College Radio in the U.S., making it up to number 5 on the CMJ charts, and has been mesmerizing fans and critiques alike.
"Queen of the Meadow" is yet a further exploration of the bands sound, stark and sensual, insidiously laced with dissonance and absinthe. What could be next for them?
