Art Elliot is an Iowa-born singer songwriter now living and working in Oakland, California. His piano based songs backed by violin and viola contain all the elements of conventional chamber pop. His influences include Ben Folds and Randy Newman and his voice sounds disarmingly like that of Maroon Five's Adam Levine.
Where his singular compositions part company with all those artists is in the choice of subject matter in that he is primarily influenced by science fiction movies and literature.
The opening track They Are Here is a classic sci-fi scenario of being pursued by strange, dark forces with the punch-line being that the narrator is a robot - it ends with the lines: "I'm know here as 0358 , I power down and heaven awaits".
The other songs are in a similarly post apocalyptic vein with themes of being lost in space or surviving on a planet ravaged by fire, winds, rain, ice or dust.
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Lyrically, it's open-ended and obscure e.g. "I leave behind my shell of consequence" (Modern Day Pioneer).
There is no linear plot here and I feel that if the six songs were someone interlinked in some way they would work better.
As it is, the record is melodic, individual and idiosyncratic but offers no entry point so I suspect most listeners are more likely to be bemused than intrigued.
Art Elliot's website
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