Ones to Watch: Lucky Elephant

Summer always brings happy-go-lucky tunes onto the airwaves. But add some disintegrating instruments and lyrics saturated with a love/hate relationship with the city and you’ve got a welcome break from the summertime norm.

Lucky Elephant have created an album in which your traditional guitars and drums are simplistic, letting a Wurlitzer jangle and harmonium hum over summer riffs and heavy sub-bass, all recorded on two-inch analogue tape, which makes ‘Star Sign Trampoline’ sound both eclectic and refreshingly homemade. “I would love to pretend that there was some sort of cunning plan,” admits chief Wurlitzer-er Sam Johnson, “but most of it was because we couldn’t afford anything else.”

Whilst such ancient instruments make live shows resemble an old-time musical bazaar, they can also lead to explosive shows. “We did a gig with Passion Pit and half of our stuff just broke during our sound check,” Sam laughs. “When we played it all blew up and was just smouldering in a corner. It does cause the odd moment, but I wouldn’t have it any other way, they’re our sound now.”

Lucky Elephant - Sam, singer Emmanuel (Manu), bassist Paul and drummer Laurence - formed almost accidently, as Sam explains: “Me and Paul were in a band called Boom Click and Manu sang on that album. Me and Paul and Manu would just be twiddling away in between sessions and we were starting to enjoy that more than the stuff we were doing with Boom Click and it mutated from there.”

Each member of the band has flitted between city and country living and the differences between the two lifestyles are drawn upon heavily throughout the album, particularly through Manu’s lyrics; “What about the heartbeat of this fishing town?” he sings of tourism
flooding a fishing town, his soothing Gallic twang contrasting with his heartfelt lyrics in ‘The Pier’. “That to a degree is the theme of the album,” Sam reveals. “Because Manu was born in France and lived in France for much of his life it was his observations of living in London, the pressures of modern city living. He personally is convinced that we’re supposed to live in the countryside and not in cities,” he laughs.

Manu’s lyrics and French lilt, along with the band’s musical oddities, provide a curious mix of sound on tracks like ‘Modern Life’ and ‘Changing People’, which features an Afrobeat backbone, offering up a rich and varied album. “Manu’s voice was the big thing; his voice is so distinct and his lyrics are so deep. He really pours his heart out and takes ages writing them and when you hear some of those lyrics you just want to write around that - that often governs the sound that we go for.”

A regular feature at Bestival, Lucky Elephant will be returning this year, bittersweet melodies in hand. Hopefully the Wurlitzer and harmonium hold out until then.

Words by Si Hawkins