Elf Army by Oliver Ignatius

Acclaimed cult musician and producer Oliver Ignatius celebrates the release of his most introspective and ambitious project to date: Elf Army. Spanning a decade of on and off writing and rewiring, the album emerges from a crucible of personal upheaval and profound self-exploration, presenting a sonic journey through loss, identity, rebirth, and back home for tea in less than 40 minutes.

Ignatius is no stranger to change. His childhood was spent a citizen of the world, as his journalist parents were deployed in the foreign bureaus of Hong Kong, Moscow, Brussels and Beijing, finally settling in Brooklyn. As a teen, he led his band Hysterics to national notoriety on MTV’s TRL, and soon after launched a startling rock opera with his second band Ghost Pal which attracted praise from NPR among others. Buckling against the pressures and compromises of the music industry, he turned his back on fame to forge his own idea of success. “I was a confused, moody and autistic teenager who really couldn’t tolerate himself, and I had to walk a different path toward wholeness,” explains Ignatius. “I opened a recording studio at 20 and devoted myself to helping others realize their musical fantasies. This was the karma yoga phase for me; I wanted to back away from the microphone, so as to let the rest of the world in.”

Now a renowned and in-demand producer, Ignatius encapsulates a decade of life’s extremes into Elf Army. In 2016, following the unexpected passing of a close friend and collaborator, artist Dan McLane, Oliver’s Brooklyn-based music collective fell into disarray, sparking a period of depression and artistic crisis. It was during this same period that death also knocked on his door at home, as his creative and life partner Bernadette Higgins battled severe endometriosis; on doctors’ advice, the two of them welcomed a daughter when they were 24, and then suffered 8 miscarriages in rapid succession, the last of which almost took Bernadette’s life. Battered but unbroken, the young family moved upstate to open Holy Fang – a new recording studio and rescue animal sanctuary which would make a name for itself as a safe haven for artists, animals, and all peace-seekers. It was during this period of uprooting that the seed for Elf Army was planted. Grief and loss haunt the echoing chambers of the new album, yet it is also infused with a sensual lust for experience, and that strange optimism that lives at the end of the darkest tunnel.

Elf Army is an intimate expression of what it sounds like to fragment into a million pieces, and then painstakingly piece oneself back together– and finds its musical DNA in a unique, psychedelic stew that is as much touched by the religious folk art of pop heroes the Beatles and Brian Wilson as by the lurching, paranoid soundscapes of Sly Stone and Lee “Scratch” Perry, with a healthy dollop of contemporary avant-garde. As Ignatius puts it: “It took labor that was at times psychically and physically painful, but for the the first time, I felt able to synthesize the influences that had set me on my obsessive musical path, and finally create something that felt new, and an honest reflection of who I am really becoming.” Quixotically, he adds: “The record had to have as much burning sun as howling rain, and equal parts deep cosmos and worm-laden dirt.”

Album opener “The Harmonies” begins with an apocalyptic call to arms, Ignatius’ guttural Mandarin chanting conjuring up memories of a childhood spent tiptoeing around Asian temples, before hard-cutting into a rising shamanic chorale, buttressed by a lyric that speaks to the mystical union of life’s disparate elements over a haunting collision of vocals, horns, and bells. The saloon piano-driven “Dan McLane Blues” could have beamed in from the 1920s, a direct and open-hearted homage to his lost friend, centering both the celebration of life and grief of death as primary themes of Elf Army. “Dan was one of the most beautiful and inspiring beacons of light I’ve ever known- like a cross between Johns Lennon and Belushi, truly the best of us, and it breaks my heart to realize he may not have known it,” Ignatius reflects. “I needed to give him his hymn.”

“Treason” follows, a lovely if slightly unsettling exercise in late night soothsaying, a Latin-tinged folk song of ambiguous warning. Meanwhile, lead single “Siren Song” juxtaposes a breakneck genre-straddling musical comedy in less than 3 minutes with spooky images of temptation, surrender and, finally, watery demise. Songs of caution, indeed.

Sometimes, however, it’s right to throw caution to the wind – as demonstrated on “A Teenager In Love,” a country-soul take on the doo wop classic originally made famous by Dion and the Belmonts. Featuring vocals from both Oliver and his daughter Lennon – north and south of teenagerdom respectively – the track evokes a feeling universal to anyone who's ever felt love’s bittersweet agony. “I thought it was funny that we should sing it together, as neither of us is a teenager,” is Oliver’s typically owlish explanation.

Elf Army understands that the personal is inexorably connected to the political. To that end, “I Keep on Singin’ the Death Cult Blues” comes in on a veritable death march, weaving a simple meditation on today’s societal scene that becomes increasingly nightmarish. The song creeps in on you, beginning on a slow burn and ultimately exploding into devastating distortion, before sending you out on a nastily epic coda of strings and sirens. “Humanity’s final denouement,” Oliver chuckles. Built on arpeggiating keyboards and guitars, atmospheric synths, and a surprising dancehall drop, “What Am I Supposed to be Writing About” grapples sardonically with an artist’s obligation to speak truth even when their own voice feels too small. Often words betray the meaning, and so halfway through the track, Ignatius lets the music speak for itself through a sinewy bridge of complex string arrangements.

The devastating “Violence by a Man Against a Woman” offers a stark, unflinching look at abuse, taking an intentionally clinical look at the endless grueling cycle of cruelty and violence inflicted on women in all corners of society. Haunting vocal arrangements rise and fall, showing the range of Ignatius’s voice and filling the listener with a conflicted sense of beauty and terror. Oliver is joined in singing by a victim of that same patriarchal abuse, whose name has been concealed to protect her identity. “This one is probably the toughest for me to listen to,” admits Ignatius. Juxtaposed against the tranquil “She Waits For Me,” a simple yet profound lullabye for Oliver’s late horse, these tracks deepen the album’s preoccupation with the necessity of striving to be the best version of yourself, for all the beings who depend on you, before it is too late.

“Pacific Ocean Blues,” a Dennis Wilson song, starkly lurches the album into a more raucous sound, with funky, phased instruments bubbling over and a lively vocal duet with feminist artist Fawn Response that gradually builds into a finale that borders on the fanatical. Thematically, the track harkens back to “Siren Song” with its aquatic message of warning – that Earth’s beauty is fleeting, fragile, and deserving of careful stewardship. Everything comes full circle with “I Will Walk,” a sweetly reflective folk-rock ballad with guest singers Odetta and Camellia Hartman that reflects on the lessons absorbed throughout Elf Army, concluding that sometimes the only answer to life’s endless march of changes is to keep on marching. The song collapses gratefully into a pile of triumphant horns and vocals that reprise a motif from “The Harmonies” - we are finally home.

Elf Army’s closing, ephemeral title track boils all that came before it down into one deceptively simple question: “Who am I?” Are you your name? Indeed, the name “Oliver” is derived from the archaic German name Alfher, meaning literally "elf army, elf warrior.” Or are you the things you do? Musician, producer, husband, father, farmer, seeker. It is said that life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. Elf Army is an invitation to explore the depths of one’s identity and the events that shape our existence. It promises to resonate deeply with fans old and new, offering a musical expedition that is as diverse in sound as it is in emotion.

Ignatius shrugs, “I guess what I’m most proud of with Elf Army is that we managed to cross the cosmic sea in just 36 minutes.” Then, a thought flickers across his face and he lightly smirks. “I think if I can do it next time in 24 minutes, I’ll have really done the job right.”