Roomful of Enamel and Gabriel Kahane’s ‘Elevator Songs’ is a high-concept trip : NPR

The vocalists within the experimental choral group Roomful of Enamel can sing absolutely anything. They examined out yodeling, Tuvan-inspired throat singing and modernist classical traditions on their Grammy-winning debut album from 2012. The singers are so exterior the field that for them to leap into it, on their new album Elevator Songs is, in itself, virtually an act of the avant-garde.

What they’ve jumped into is a collaboration with the gifted songwriter Gabriel Kahane, who has written a set of songs particularly for the group that nudge the singers in direction of the sides of their consolation zones. With the intention to take a look at an ensemble accustomed to the unconventional, the music leans closely in direction of pop. Every tune was written for a person voice within the ensemble to sing solo, whereas the remainder present expressive backup.

Elevator Songs is a excessive idea album. The elevator in query is a function of an imaginary, multidimensional resort. It takes us by way of time and area, stopping on flooring to satisfy a group of company, some troubled, others merely caught up of their sophisticated lives. Assume The White Lotus meets All the things All over the place All at As soon as. The songs are constructed on melodies that pop, they usually go down straightforward, however the vivid portraits they paint linger.

Kahane, an expressive vocalist himself, sings the opening and shutting tracks on the album, appearing as a type of metaphysical doorman. He additionally offers keys and guitar. “To be sincere, this resort is type of creepy. The ice machine is talking in tongues,” he chants within the prologue, escorting us into the elevator, as much as room 813 and the tune “St. Vincent’s Hospital.”

Right here we’re transported to the late Eighties. A person is alone in his room with its bible and digital clock, “however not one ballpoint pen.” He is drafting a eulogy for an AIDS sufferer. “Hey, this is not the primary time I’ve executed it, making a map of sorrow in my head,” sings Enamel member Steven Bradshaw in an pressing, brightly polished tenor voice.

There’s room for a variety of emotion in Kahane’s resort. In room 1212, a U.S. soldier offers with flashes of PTSD within the tune “Not even the Useless,” Mingjia Chen’s velvety soprano rising more and more feverish. Down within the foyer bar, a lady contemplates her previous, her gin and maybe a divorce. “Does anybody ever study the temperature the place reminiscence burns,” Esteli Gomez sings in an incandescent efficiency, whereas Enamel members, in tiny voices, mumble recollections beneath.

There are humorous stops on the trip. In room 1832 (“Valise”) we encounter a self-absorbed fashionista well being guru in the midst of recording a podcast, advising his listeners on all the things from “capsule wardrobes” to the way to fight “local weather grief whereas flying.” Jodie Landau’s efficiency is terrifically tongue-in-cheek, whereas the chorus (Put it in my valise / Put it in my black bag / Put it in my Cucinelli knapsack), sung by the remainder of the Enamel, is supremely addictive.

Kahane is one in all right this moment’s most insightful and witty wordsmiths. He as soon as used posts from Craigslist to create Schubert-styled lieder. He additionally boarded an Amtrak practice, with out his telephone or web connection, for a two-week journey throughout America, assembly passengers (singing with a few of them) and turning his journey diary right into a fascinating album.

Over on the resort’s health middle, Kahane has crafted a mock operatic scene for a skeezy sizzling tub lurker. Bass-baritone Thann Scoggin sings ridiculous strains (“I slip into the water and chill the f*** out”) in an appropriately operatic vibrato.

Gabriel Kahane himself has the final phrase on the album, again within the elevator, within the tune “All That’s Stable.” He assumes a ghostly presence — suggesting that he has at all times been right here, measuring the pains and wishes of the resort’s company, whose lives replicate nothing lower than our personal.

In an period after we have a tendency to emphasise singles — if not 10-second clips — over albums, I welcome the immersive expertise of Elevator Songs. However even when you do not buy the vanity, or simply need to cherry decide, the album presents poignant depictions of our emotionally messy lives in arresting, bespoke performances by Roomful of Enamel, a bunch that proves it could wrap its particular person and collective voices round any music and any idea.