“Moody and stark and prone to escalation, be it in noise, in rhythm, in desperation or feeling.” That’s how we described Slightest of Treason, the previous album from Eldridge Rodriguez back in 2020. The record was a product of the political climate, drawing from across the rock spectrum to evoke a sound both melancholic and charged with feeling. A sound perhaps more accessible than the Eldridge Rodriguez back-catalogue but still loaded with cathartic potential. “There is energy to be found in the unlikeliest of places,” as we continued. “In anger and fear and sadness and doubt. Slightest of Treason does not so much harness this energy as unleash it, letting the deluge follow whatever tributaries it finds, trusting in the intuitive connect that comes from such an authentic outpouring.”
With the record coming out just as the world shut down at the onset of the pandemic, the band—that is Cameron Keiber (guitar, keys, vocals), David Grabowski (bass, keys), Clayton Keiber (guitar) and Dennis Grabowski (drums, percussion)—saw themselves shelving plans to tour in support of the release and instead returned to the studio. A productive period saw them put over twenty five new songs in the can, and so originated the fifth Eldridge Rodriguez full-length, Atrophy.
The new material is perhaps typified by ‘Megalodon‘, the record’s lead single which shows off new pop and slacker influences. “A sound that’s a little brighter, possessing a carefree bounce however wry and cutting the lyrics,” as we put it in a preview. “As though the band have stumbled across a certain slacker rock acceptance amid the trauma of the moment.” If Slightest of Treason was the alarmed soundtrack to a country sliding ever rightward, then here we find life after such a turn has taken root. More specifically, an attempt to exist in spite of ignorance, cruelty and unvented anger. “The best you can do is move on,” as the refrain offers.
But to live among (and be governed by) bad people requires you to in some way turn the lens upon yourself. To ask whether you live up to such standards. A process perhaps exacerbated by the pandemic and strange blend of isolation and public duty it asked of us all. Hence Atrophy is often more introspective in its themes, seeking forgiveness and redemption as much as anything else. “I’m burying hatchets, I’m making a mess,” as Keiber sings on ‘The Strange Things That Happen to People‘. “Trying to be a better person /gonna be a better friend.” The track is contemplative in tone, bearing the past as an accumulated weight which grows more apparent year on year until there’s no option but to confront it.
This becomes the album’s central theme. Take ‘Have I Gone To Far’, a picture of lockdown loneliness in all of its dull repetition, the taut rhythm contained with an overarching slackness, like an anxious mind stuck within an empty house. “There is a silence in this room,” as Keiber sings, “there is a silence you get used to.” Other tracks place volatility at the forefront, be it the plea of ‘Help Me Help Me’ or the unhinged ‘Casual Jesus’, which plays like patience unravelling in real time, complete with escalating momentum and throaty yelped vocals. By comparison, ‘Without All Your Teeth You Can’t Get into Heaven’ is far more relaxed, though some of the needle and desperation still shows itself. The sense of being judged in some manner, the idea salvation is contingent on the present and perhaps the past too. The fear, ultimately, of being locked out of the possibility of redemption and scratching at the door before it is too late.
Atrophy is out now via Midriff Records.
Cover Photo by Cameron Keiber, design by Bea Talplacido