There’s something in the water in Ruston, Louisiana. Musician Scott Spillane, a Ruston, LA native who now resembles the magnificently-bearded lovechild of Abraham Lincoln and Santa Clause, leans back, casually off-center as he humorously recounts an anecdote from his childhood: “Every once in a while, Ruston, um, Water Supply… would send out a letter that, uh, just to inform you, the fecal level of the water exceeded the parts-per-million limit, you know, sorry for the inconvenience.” He laughs. Excessive fecal matter may not have been the actual cause, but there’s definitely something in the water that led Spillane, as well as several other likeminded Ruston teenagers like Jeff Mangum, Will Hart and Robert Schneider to join together and create the deeply influential and unique musical collective, the Elephant 6 Recording Co. Such things don’t always happen with such harmonious synchronicity, and they almost always come from people who wouldn’t fit in anywhere else.
Even if you haven’t heard of Elephant 6, you’ve likely heard of one of the groups under its tutelage. The most commercially successful of the collective is Neutral Milk Hotel, whose influential 1998 album, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, skyrocketed the group, and its label, to unprecedented popularity in the indie music landscape. That’s also where the story ends, in a sense, since the heightened attention brought from Aeroplane both oversaturated the label’s lineup – too many bands wanted to use the Elephant 6 logo – and sent one of its most notable figureheads, Mangum, into a self-imposed reclusive exile from which he’s only sporadically resurfaced. But the straightforwardly-titled The Elephant 6 Recording Co., directed by C.B. Stockfleth, is far less interested in the music than it is the people. It’s an off-kilter ode to a group of relative eccentrics, brought together through a shared love of retro-psychedelic pop, who managed to find a community in which to build upon their artistic ideal. That people listened almost seems to be a happy accident.
Ebullient and relatively unconcerned with audience initiation, Stockfleth’s documentary certainly appears to be a product of the vibrant community it depicts, rather than a view from the outside in. The filmmaking is irrepressibly quirky – sometimes too much so – and has a distinct scrapbook quality that extends from its scattered talking head interviews (such as Elijah Wood, whose baffling inclusion in the film is never elaborated on. He’s not even a producer!) to the myriad of creative editing choices utilized to stitch them all together. Collage-like transitions made with paper and cut-out photographs capture the same handmade quality that Schneider, one of Elephant 6’s key components, brought to his frequent production of the label’s music. Interviewees, mostly from various bands covered in the documentary such as Neutral Milk Hotel, The Apples in Stereo, and the Olivia Tremor Control, talk about their experiences as if recalling fond memories. These anecdotes often have less to do with the music than the antics surrounding it, such as the experience of sharing a cluttered, one-bedroom apartment together, or the ramshackle construction of Schneider’s Pet Sounds Studio, where much of the collective’s self-recorded music was mixed.
The main point seems to be how incredible it is that so much highly-specific creativity could come from just a few groupings of relatively-nearby small towns, whether that be Ruston or Athens, GA. Each of these bands influenced and built off of one another, with members frequently jumping from group-to-group and playing on each other’s records. The most profound insights come from these musician’s reflections on their own obsessions. “These people are as extreme as I feel,” Secret Square and one-time Neutral Milk Hotel bandmate Lisa Janssen states at once point. Hearing the likes of Robert Schneider, Olivia Tremor Control’s Bill Doss, or Will Hart break down their own creative processes in terms of creating music is legitimately fascinating. The casualness of Stockfleth’s interviews lends much of the movie the sensation of walking in on a musician’s studio and being invited for a loose, frequently excitable tour of their various sonic likes and dislikes. As a musician, it can be enthralling and inspiring to watch, because none of these people seemed to be all too high on their own supply and are perfectly happy to share the wealth of their combined, largely self-learned knowledge. The film only falters in this off-the-cuff approach when acknowledging its ghosts. An unseen Jeff Mangum is only heard in barely audible narration. Worse, the late Bill Doss, who tragically died in 2012, is misleadingly presented as being interviewed synchronously with his bandmates, only for his death to be revealed the movie’s final third.
There’s a possibility that The Elephant 6 Recording Co. will mostly be of interest to those already in the know. Stockfleth’s obvious enthusiasm for the collective’s work can give the movie an inside-baseball feel, which is only compounded by the occasional cut to an interviewee like the aforementioned Wood or comedian David Cross, whose insights don’t add much to the proceedings beyond celebrity value. It’s not exactly a circle jerk, but the documentary lacks a certain emotional depth that’s clouded over by its unwavering reverence for the material. Documentaries can, and should, have dramatic or emotional arcs, and Stockfleth’s movie too often feels as if it’s not heading anywhere in particular. Still, if documentaries are supposed to prompt curiosity, then Elephant 6 does that with resounding success. This critic, for one, was inspired to listen to The Olivia Tremor Control’s Dusk at the Cubist Castle (good album) after viewing. Perhaps others will be moved to do the same.
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment
The post The Elephant 6 Recording Co. appeared first on Spectrum Culture.