Photo by Laurine Jousserand
Celebrity Etc and WCBE 90.5 present Elephant Stone with special guests Evolof and Mezclado at Rumba Cafe on Thursday, March 28. Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door. Doors are at 7pm, music starts at 8pm.
Montreal’s Elephant Stone have always counted the Beatles as an influence – the psychedelic period where songs featured sitar and trippy guitars with lush and evocative vocals. Their latest, Back Into Dream, not only channels that Beatles influence but sounds at home alongside the best of artists like Tame Impala, Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Black Angels and even some of Beck’s non-pop material.
I recently spoke with frontman Rishi Dhir for BigTakeover.com (read the full interview here), an excerpt of which you can find below. Take it from me, Back Into Dream is going to wind up on my “Favorites of 2024” list so I’d highly recommend checking this show out.
With an album called Back Into The Dream, I’m wondering if you remember dreams?
RISHI: Ever since I was a child, I was haunted by these terrifying dreams. I remember one was almost like a Platoon scene, going down a rabbit hole and I don’t know who we’re going after. I go into a room and it’s my old house and my grandmother, who lived with us when I was younger, is standing there on the bed. I was terrified of this room as a child and my grandfather, who I never met, was hanging by a noose in the dream. Then my grandmother pointed at me and would say “You’re next” I would have these horrible anxiety dreams. Also, I always had these dreams that were about space and time in some ways and I felt so far away from people. It was always panic inducing. All these dreams have haunted me my whole life, but I think during COVID, I started to daydream a lot and I tuned out all the time. I found I was doing that a lot during COVID just to escape every day.
For this album, I wrote the songs and I was looking for a title and then I came upon this article by a friend of mine that passed away, Paul Gleason. He was a music writer. We became really close. He died of, I think, kidney failure. He was based out of Chicago or somewhere near there. He wrote this review of our album The Three Poisons, and the headline was “Back Into the Dream.” I came upon that article one day and thought it would be a nice homage to Paul and it also sums up this album, either wanting to disconnect from society and get lost in your dreams, or maybe you want to follow your dreams, so it has a few meanings to it.
That’s a lovely tribute to Paul. Do you go into albums with themes in mind and try to craft stuff around that or do album themes emerge after you’ve written the songs and you take a step back and see that they are all about something?
RISHI: The melody and the harmony come first and the lyrics come after. I take my lyrics pretty seriously where it has to mean something, has to convey emotions. For this album, lyrically, I had a batch of songs and then I went into the studio and was like, “I gotta write lyrics.” It worked out that it has a strong, not necessarily a narrative, but a theme to it.
The music you make fits into a certain niche. It’s not getting played on the radio but you probably have a lot of fans who discover you when they read something like this interview or maybe they read an article about another band and then as they go down the rabbit hole exploring that band, they’ll stumble on Elephant Stone. The popular band that I think could be a good starting off point that will eventually lead to you is Tame Impala. Are you okay with being that niche band while Tame Impala is selling out 5,000 seat venues?
RISHI: Definitely. At one point, I think with our album Little Ship of Fools, I was like, “Okay, I’m going for it.” I was listening to a lot more Manchester stuff, dance-y stuff, I was getting into that zone, and I remember I was like, “This is it. The band’s going to make it.” That didn’t happen. I was pushing myself for five years, just album, tour, album, tour. After that album, I needed to take a break and really think about what I was doing. I put Elephant Stone on the back burner. I put out a few singles with Acid House Ragas, which was this electronic project I did for a couple singles. I put out a record with MIEN, my other band with Alex from The Black Angels, Tom from The Horrors, and JM from The Earlies.
I just needed to understand what Elephant Stone meant to me. Coming back to Hollow, I realized Elephant Stone was an expression for me. It didn’t matter if I wasn’t playing thousand-seat arenas. If I was playing to 20 people, it didn’t matter. This was my therapy. A lot of my friends are seeing therapists these days. I think music’s my therapy. The fact that in these songs, I’m literally able to put my heart on my sleeve and once I get it out there, I can move on and not feel it and let go of things.
I’ve been doing Elephant Stone for 15 years. I’ve been making music for 25 years with bands. At this point, I know people appreciate us. I know we have fans. I don’t have any false delusions of grandeur where the band should be. I’m fine with that. It’s the music I make and it’s a niche market, which is good. It means there’s always going to be people for that.
On Instagram, you’ve posted some pictures from the studio where you’ve said, “Listening to (insert artist name) when creating this song.” Would you say those artists are more of an influence or more of an inspiration?
RISHI: It’s hard to say. When writing the song, you’re in a half-wake state. I come in the studio every day and I pick guitar and I just start playing a chord. I’m definitely inspired. I remember the album I was obsessed with was the last Frank Ocean album, Blonde. When I heard it, it sounded like Elliott Smith to me. It had that kind of genius to it. I guess I’ll be writing a song, I’ll be recording it, and then I’m like “Oh, this song reminds me of Yes.” And then I’ll start listening to Yes. Or, “This song reminds me of Genesis. What was that keyboard sound he’s using?” It’s always me doing my thing then also having all these touch points of music that I love and kind of checking it out and seeing how that applies to my music and mixing everything together.
I listen to a song like “History Repeating” and it sounds like it could be very specifically about your own life but it also sounds like it could be more universal and looking at society as a whole. When you’re writing lyrics, how much is personal and how much is more about looking around you and writing about universal themes?
RISHI: I think when I feel like I’ve succeeded most is when I’m able to make something very clear to me, but ambiguous to everyone else. I’m not stuffing it down their throat kind. For “History Repeating,” it started with a very personal thing when I came up with the words but then I took a step back. It starts very personal and then you look around you and it’s like, “That kind of relates to this. How does that make me feel?” Being a songwriter, you’re like an empath. Writing songs, you’re trying to feel what the other person’s feeling and understand why they’re that way or why things are happening that way?
It’s personal, but then as I’m writing the lyrics I’ll be like, “This is too literal. It’s kind of boring when things are too literal,” so then I’ll try to blur the lines a little and I’ll show it to my wife. What she takes out of it will be different than what I take out of it and then I’m like, “I think we’re getting somewhere with that.”
The way the album starts and ends, it’s a great sandwich. I’m always happy when the album is bookended by good stuff with good filling in between. Was the idea to come out strong out of the gate with “Lost in a Dream” and make a statement, take people on a journey for the next 39 minutes?
RISHI: “Lost in a Dream” was me trying to do the Nazz. I wanted to come out confident. Sequencing an album is everything, everything has to fit. I’ve sequenced every Elephant Stone album so that it works on vinyl. The first half has to be 20 minutes and Side B has to take you somewhere else. “Lost in a Dream” bookends with “Another Year Gone.” That song to me was like, “This has to close the album.”
Have you figured out from a touring perspective how to make it financially successful at this point?
RISHI: No. Luckily where I’m from in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, I have access to grants for cultural exporting. I still have a day job. I’m a technical writer, I work 9-to-5. I come home and I work in the studio. I have three kids. The band is self-sustaining with our access to funding so I’m able to tour.
