Call it a miracle or a reward for patience. Either way, the third and final album from The Olivia Tremor Control has now seen the light of day. Some history: The Elephant 6 Recording Company is a collective formed by primary members of The Olivia Tremor Control, The Apples in Stereo, and Neutral Milk Hotel. These bands all crosspollinated, spiderwebbed into side projects, and included new acts from friends and likeminded artists; producing such a weirdly brilliant streak of a catalog in the ‘90s that the movement is forever considered to be a cornerstone for underground music. The Olivia Tremor Control in particular are the most kaleidoscopic of the bunch. The two albums released during their lifespan, 1996’s Dusk at Cubist Castle and 1999’s Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume 1, are gargantuan sensory trips that veer seamlessly from Beatles-esque pop numbers to melting-wall psychedelic blitzes to sound collage. Principal songwriters and vocalists Bill Doss and Will Cullen Hart began to pursue other work—The Sunshine Fix and Circulatory System, respectively—at this time, leaving their collaborative future uncertain. They returned to a live setting in 2005, playing shows right up until Doss’s sudden death in 2012 from an aneurysm. It was revealed around this time that a third album was in the works prior to the tragedy. After two decades of living with multiple sclerosis, Hart suffered a fatal heart attack on November 29th, 2024, the same day that the first two singles debuted from The Same Place, the double LP conclusion of The Olivia Tremor Control. “27 tracks recorded before the passing of Bill Doss and W. Cullen Hart.” Along with the group and its featured players, it has been noted by press that producers Derek Almstead and Jason NeSmith, and co-producer Ron Kwasman are “the three people that got this album to the finish line.”
David Bowie died two days after the release of his album Blackstar in 2016. A longstanding bout with liver cancer yet made public was then revealed, and lyrical content was given instantaneously deeper context. The Same Place is maybe the first album since that’s harkened back to this sensation. Artists tend to ruminate on their fate as they grow older but there’s a big difference between musing on mortality and writing from the perspective of the afterlife. Then again, The Olivia Tremor Control’s narratives have always been built on existentialism and of cosmic matter, so timing and retrospect may be banding together superstitiously to aid the heaviness of intent this time around. They’ve presented as well-wishing rock oracles though, long before their co-chairs were swept from this earth. Whereas the semi-posthumous nature of this album would in most cases arouse an eerie pall in its wake, Elephant 6’s experimental daydreamers have chosen to bring piñatas to this going away party. It’s as contemplative as it is celebratory.
There are several points along the way that are plentiful in bittersweetness to make even a listener of passing familiarity weep. “The Same Old Place” is music one hopes to be greeted with into the pearly gates. Doss, ever the cheery carnival barker, sings of returning to the mountain range and being welcomed “home” as the tune is rife with reverence in the form of a trademark bric-à-brac sound effect library, a xylophone, and no less than five members credited with providing handclaps. It’s impossible not to picture Doss garbed in an angelic robe while cutting his vocals, an unafraid smile belting out what can all too easily be theorized through mythmaking as an elegy for himself. The power and spirit behind these songs make it hard to think rationally; you’d be forgiven in romanticizing their meaning.
Reliably, Hart holds up his end of expectations as the unit’s oblique lyrical surrealist and pusher of sonic envelopes. A great many of his contributions would befit Willy Wonka’s wondrous boat ride, but “Meeting Ourselves” manages to transmute the encapsulation of life into a sage moment, quelling fears of the hourglass and focusing on the light at the end of the tunnel. Here he’s cashed in one of his finest compositions, featuring further evidence of astonishingly omniscient portent: “These are your days of life, so float past the waves of joy / Don’t you see? We’ll meet ourselves again.”
A rare lead vocal performance from Peter Erchick stuns around the midway point on “Now Begin”, a stargazing rest stop from the pianist that’s inspired and commanding, paired with resplendent cello melodies from Heather McIntosh. Hart then manipulates the tape to shift gears into a warped, slightly sped up outro. Its strange circus tempo and grainy fidelity carries on the traditional notion that despite this being a post-2000s production, it bears the arcane signifiers and inherent cryptic quality of a work that’s been uncovered in an attic, heretofore undisturbed since its initial placement. A skosh spooky, but playfully eldritch.
The hallmarks are all present. When it comes to large gaps in discography, The Same Place has achieved mbv levels of comeback. It dependably represents the energy of themselves without sounding like a retread, a sensible follow-up to their previous work and immediately classic in its revelations. Everyone’s best intuitions are captured. The shimmering, summery jangle of “Hideaway” and “A Place We Have Been To” reemerges in “Garden of Light”, a perfect pop number from Doss late in the tracklist bathed in an irresistibly bouncy groove and vibrant descending guitar arpeggios.
As is custom, the seven-part suite “Path of the Parallels” serves as The Same Place’s odyssey of a centerpiece like “The Bark and Below It” and “Green Typewriters” before it. Majestic and ethereal, the group is operating at their most haunting here, shifting between avenues of stream of consciousness, all preoccupied with life cycle and Hart’s best description of a vanishing point. If it evokes imagery of a ferryman transporting the dead to their final destination, it may come as no surprise that the band members are all credited with the role of “boatman” in the liner notes for its closing album-titular segment. Hart expounds upon Doss’s sunnier proclamations from earlier, this time in funereal dirge: “No matter what you do, no matter what you say / No matter who your friends are, no matter what you’ve done / You’re heading to the same old place, it’s part of me and you.” Once his point is settled, the key turns minor to major, erupting in a bonfire jam. Gloom has never been synonymous with the band; faced with demise, they choose to go out moving and shaking.
Fans will have a lot to chew on when it comes to the apparent prescience on display. After all, this is an event that’s been hotly anticipated for so long that it’s evolved into a mournful occasion as well. But paying respects and communing with ghosts aside, one thing that can be said with undeniable truth is that The Same Place is a record obsessed with time. It’s sorry for the time lost in the hiatus that followed Black Foliage and it’s also likely addressing the time it took to (recently) complete itself. In the same breath, it is remarkably, unflinchingly Zen in relation to that time, viewing it as a necessity and something to wield. Like the oft-memetic monologue of Watchmen’s Dr. Manhattan, The Olivia Tremor Control render linear time an uncanny passage. Rather than resigning themselves to the practice, they reach in directions from both past and future and never risk banality or loftiness. They’re temporal wizards, and whichever paths their compass has directed them in all this time—whether masquerading as forgotten relics or waxing benediction from the great beyond—their march has always been a progression.
You may purchase the record here.
