elison – Queen City Sounds and Art

Elison delves into the darker side of nostalgia on “Fruit Flies.” It has a sound like an AM radio pop song appropriate to this self-aware consideration of how we can romanticize a time that wasn’t so good for or to us but the hindsight of adulthood brings some clarity to the those memories and how trying to live up to them can poison the present with habits of feeling. “Get drunk on the memories,” Marissa Kephart sings in the chorus as swirling glittery guitar tones sweep by, ending the line with “Spin out of control.” It’s a statement about how one can get stuck in the past while some people are able to say goodbye to another part of their life and the ways of being that no longer seem relevant but we’re all shaped by how we’ve been and it’s easy to engage in self-judgment and get stuck with those memories as a kind of personal, perpetual cudgel and re-litigate and repeat patterns to try to get things right to think doing so will give us an illusory sense of control. The exuberance of the melody and its lightness contrasts with lines like “I still haven’t taken out my trash” and “Body molding from the inside” as an impetus to clean one’s house for the New Year and a new you and this song sounds like the will to do so at last. Listen to “Fruit Flies” on Spotify and follow elison at the links provided.

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It’s not too often a song about being in a relationship with a narcissistic people pleaser who gaslights a romantic partner sounds so driving and upbeat. But elison’s “Covered Me” has some energetic, fuzzy guitar riffs and hazy vocal harmonies in the choruses like a dream pop song with a bit more of an edge. The guitar solo toward the middle of the song sounds like something out of an 80s pop tune the likes of which you might have heard in a Kim Wilde song. But contrast in energy between the progressive pace and Marissa Kephart’s strong yet wistful vocals and lyrics that really capture the portrait of a person who lies all the time in order to maintain a self-image and an illusion for others of a lovable person who is popular with everyone and whose lies are so pervasive that the person with whom they’re involved in an intimate relationship never really knows where they stand and can’t trust their own feelings especially upon witnessing the faux charm exercised with others and the emotional abuse delivered in private. That contrast of moods and sounds is a little reminiscent of the way Rilo Kiley would have some of the most emotionally devastating and sharply observed lyrics paired with beautiful and uplifting songwriting. Which in the end makes the musical complexity implied by that contrast all the more effective. Listen to “Cover Me” on Spotify and follow the duo of Kephart and Scott Yoshimura as elison at the links provided.