FIRST LISTEN: Cheers Elephant Drop New Single, “Steak Knife”
What may be the catchiest band to ever hail from Philadelphia is back at it again. For the third time in several months, Cheers Elephant is teasing fans with the release of a new single, the third track since the release of their last and defining album, Like Wind Blows Fire. The band ditched Philly for L.A. just before the album’s release and has since dropped the surfy “Speak Think,” the spacey “Airliner,” and now “Steak Knife,” the latest indie-pop jam to be chewed up and spit out from the band — and it’s a doozy.
The track kicks off with a thunderingly fuzzy and distorted riff from seriously underrated guitarist Jordan del Rosario, which gives way to the first verse, featuring the lines “I don’t want to change my ways/ drag a comb through my hair/ I don’t like being late / but time, it ain’t fair / and this life, it’s knocking at my door / with a knife in hand, it’s cutting right through me, the shape I’m in.”
Throughout the song, del Rosario’s fuzzy guitar pops in and out, all the while staying afloat over the chugging beat laid down by Robert “King” Kingsly and his rhythm section partner-in-crime, bassist Travelin’ Matt Rothstein. If anything, the feel-good vibes emitted from the tune prove one thing: These Elephants are in their prime.
As for the future of the band? That’s the difficult part, because nobody’s really sure. In January and February of this year, the guys were set to go on tour with Wild Child, during which they’d play a date at Johnny Brenda’s. However, the band was forced to pull out of the tour. In March, it was announced that lead singer Derek Krzywicki had “stepped away” from Cheers Elephant but, oddly enough, all the band’s music released since then features all four original Elephants, including Krzywicki’s characteristically giddy voice on lead vocals. So we’re not really sure what’s going on there. But if the “hole in my heart” Krzywicki sings about in the song’s outro is referring to Philadelphia, our arms will be wide open when the Elephants come home.
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