Elliot Minor : 'Solaris'
Released: 6th July 2009
Label: Repossession Records
Elliot Minor are a band who seem to have the world at their feet. Whether it’s featuring highly on festival bills, winning MySpace competitions or having their songs picked for soundtracks and adverts, the band are on the up-and-up. Later this year they will release a second album to follow their self-titled debut, and with that very much on the horizon new single ‘Solaris’ operates as a preview to the main event.
The song begins as I’d have expected it to in many ways – an epic, stadium-rock introduction with a lead guitar riff dominating, before the song settles down into a very simple verse whose main focus is the vocal. Aside from some semi-surprising but pretty low key, erm, keys, this is sure as day the tried and trusted rock formula on display; emotional, provocative vocal delivery and power chord pop guitars, it is music that will incite love and hatred in pretty equal measures. The chorus arrives on queue, ‘Oh she’s bringing in the light’ – it’s hardly Dylan, but then it’s not meant to be, admirers of this sort of band aren’t it’s fair to say that bothered about innuendo and double-entendre, they just want to be able to sing along and they’ll have absolutely no trouble remembering this one. Structurally, the song is simple – there are literally no surprises, no shifts in direction, just a one way journey from intro to outro taking in all the stock elements of rock-pop in between. The solo, the bridge, the key change, the works.
Can I really criticise Elliot Minor for sticking to the fundamental principles of writing music people will buy? If I did it’d probably only be representative of jealousy, for Elliot Minor are nailing something 99% of bands cannot even acknowledge – the need to make that melody stick in the brain of the listener until they’re forced to start humming it. If their album is of similar melodic resonance it’ll sell more copies than I have the patience to count, of that there’s no doubt.
To one man, this is epic rock, to another it’s sell-out pop, but wherever you lay your allegiance I for one won’t deny that whatever you call it, Elliot Minor are masters of their craft. I just happen to really, really hate that craft. Each to their own.
7/10
Words: Benjamin Coley
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