Boston guitar-rock band Elephants have been one of our very faves in town ever since convincing us back in 2014 that the turtles were right. We’d rather not get into exactly what they were right about (the past is in the past), but it taught us to listen closely to the lyrics of singer-guitarist Loren Ipsum. Today, in the quartet’s new single “Goodbye, Breakup Diner”, a surging post-indie rock jam from their upcoming LP Endless Arcade, Ipsum again delivers some lyrical wisdom as she offers this nugget appropriate for the times: “Summer is fading,” she sings with carefree abandon, “and I would rather just stay in.”
The new Elephants LP is out September 30 on cassette via Rochester-based Dadstache Records, and self-released by the band digitally and on 10-inch vinyl the same day.
“Endless Arcade is definitely a concept album,” says Ipsum. “Last winter, we got the idea to write a bunch of tightly-packed, short songs, and once we started turning a few riffs into more complete ideas, it quickly took on its own momentum. Our songwriting was influenced by proto-punk revival and pop-punk; we aimed to write music that was stripped-down and energetic. We wanted to incorporate elements of those influences in an organic way, filtering all that through our own style — fuzzy tones, thick guitars, dual leads, and uptempo rhythms. It was a lot of fun to explore that kind of songwriting — to distill all the ideas down into the smallest, rawest forms we could.”
And perfect for the annual transition here in Boston from casual summer to clusterfuck fall, Elephants’ new jam is all about making peace and moving on.
“The themes center around the end of a friendship; realizing you’ve grown apart from a person you’ve been close to, dealing with that, and moving on,” says Ipsum, adding that “Goodbye, Breakup Diner” is “about feeling bummed out going back to places you used to hang out with that person, and coming to the understanding that you both have to let it go.”
Listen to “Goodbye, Breakup Dinner” below via Soundcloud.