Good Health was one of the most exciting punk albums of the 00's, full of enchantingly savage guitars and a couldn'tgiveafuck vocal shriek to match. Then the band seemed to lose its nerve, wanting to prove that it could do pretty, that the fretwork could be matched by patience and grace. Ok! Proven! Elan Vital is full of intricate textures and moves, and the subject matter is decidedly darker and more fearful and more post-Ok-Computer than anything from the band's earlier days. Good Health was all skeletons exposed to the sunshine, this is an album cloaked in night, sulking and darting in shadows, daring you to know it.
And that's the basic gambit here: the band plays hard to get and hopes that you'll come tumbling after them and into their trap. But the songs don't quite leave enough compelling candy in their wake, and the lyrics too often undermine the band's seriousness with some More Adventurous-era Rilo-Kiley hand-wringing. Worse still, Andrea Zollo's voice, perfectly suited to bratty screed-screeching and desperate longing, just isn't up to shouldering the band's Muse-y epic-sized ambitions. What's left is an impressive maze of art-rock angles, but without enough soul at the center to get you invested in winding through it 3/5
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