Future Elevators – Future Elevators

Vinyl LP pressing. 2016 release. Michael Shackelford first wrote down the words “future” and “elevators” a few years ago on a rough instrumental demo. The music never grew into a finished song, but that simple, surprisingly evocative phrase stuck. It's an apt phrase for one of Birmingham's most original musical acts. Shackelford-the group's founder, mainstay, and guiding creative force-is something of a pop confectioner who thinks up impossible sounds and makes them a reality. His self-titled debut as Future Elevators expertly mixes whimsy and gravity, the fantastical with the everyday. Even as he grounds his lyrics in real-world issues, he fills his songs with new and improbable combinations of familiar sounds: the jagged pastoral folk of ‘Alabama Song’, the Rube Goldberg blues riffs of ‘Machine Maker’, the retro-futuristic R&B of ‘Modern World’, the warm drone of the ten-minute instrumental closer ‘Aphrodite’. Shackelford spent a year piecing his debut album together. Recording with him was Lynn Bridges (Devendra Banhart/Dexateens) and the album was mixed by Darrell Thorp (Radiohead/Beck).

1. Rome on a Saturday
2. Modern World
3. Losing Sleep
4. Just Another Day
5. Alabama Song
6. Machine Maker
7. It Is What It Is
8. Everything Everywhere
9. Narcosis
10. Aphrodite

Label: Communicating Vessel

Catalog: 29

Genre: Rock