Clutch: The Elephant Riders
1998
Columbia Records
Format I Own it on: Compact Disc
Track Listing: 1. The Elephant Riders 2. Ship of Gold 3. Eight Times Over Miss October 4. The Soapmakers 5. The Yeti 6. Muchas Veces 7. Green Buckets 8. Wishbone 9. Crackerjack 10. The Dragonfly
Hooo, yes...I remember this coming out when I was in college...It felt like a hundred years since Clutch had last released an album and they had become one of my all-time favorites since the release of their 1995 self-titled album...I doubled-down on Ramen, saved my quarters and eventually squirreled away enough funds to check this out. Pound for pound, I don't think it's quite as strong as their previous one, but you don't really realize it when 80% of what's here is so mind-blowingly awesome...
Probably my second favorite Clutch album...The first half is a sort of Sepia-toned classic-rock outlining such 19th century concerns as...
...hardtack...
...and fighting the Civil War on Elephants...Wha...?
Again, the lyrics are outstanding...Less concerned with outer space and beyond as the entire history of wonders right here on planet Earth...Check out these lines from "The Yeti":
"The author looms above his page,
And thinks it strange that at his age,
He cannot find the proper words,
To describe his only world.
One would think that in a life,
Where no two snowflakes are alike,
One would have a brilliant rhyme,
For each and every bit of time..."
Always gets me...And Neil's just keeps singing better and better...Listening to his mighty roar, there's no way he's not 10 feet tall and 1,000 pounds.... And Tim Sult has a way with big bearded riffs..."Eight Times Over Miss October" is lumbering, yet nimble and even 15 years down the line, it still gets me going...
It seems during the second half, things they modernize things, a bit...There's the conspiratorial trash-collection story in "Green Buckets"...
...and the shoulda-been-a-hit "Wishbone" outlines the various meals you make on different holidays...
For example, he eats Turkey, 'tatas, succotash and rutabagas for Thanksgiving...(Which is this Thursday, btw)...
...a glazed ham for Christmas (hmmm, maybe he was stopping at Bronner's yesterday...
...For St. Patrick's it's cabbage, corned beef stew, and egg salad sandwiches...Damn, I'm getting hungry...
Best of all, is "Muchas Veces," which hammers home how great the rhythm section truly is...A globe-spanning story of love and intrigue that starts at the local five and dime and ends with the narrator waking up in a coffin underneath an altar to the east of Machu Pichu...
...It's hard not to be sold when the delivery is so great...Easily, my second favorite Clutch song...
Things wane a bit towards the end, and the two or three minutes of feedback isn't the rousing finale the album deserves, but when all is said and done "The Elephant Riders" was another good album in a long line of many...
Oh yea, I should mention there's three different versions of the album...The differences lie in the hidden track...My particular version has "05"...
"Which version do you have, kids?"
"Ohhhh, that nice...Let's check out "Wishbone" by Clutch....SKREEEE!!!!!!!!!!!"
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