Grade: A Minus
By Franklin Soults
No wonder singer/songwriter Elizabeth Elmore traded her amplifier for law books two years ago. Despite her extraordinary albums with Sarge, the career prospects of that defunct Illinois trio were as ordinary as their traditional indie-rock sound, the same yearing-yet-cagey mix of punky guitars, pop harmonies and college-girl angst once plied by coeds from Belly to the Blake Babies. Yet as this Northwestern University Law School dropout (note from Elizabeth - this is not true! I didn’t drop out!) knows, her traditionalism ran too deep to abandon. "We are the stars of amateur hour," she coos on this return. "An artless gluttony for squalid nights and heated promises, it brings us crawling back." Except she ain’t crawling. By judiciously adding horn charts and other artful touches, Elmore takes Sarge’s sound one natural if ambitious step forward, thus honoring her new quartet’s slyly presumptuous name. Her career prospects remain shaky, of course, but her talents have never sounded so assured.