Elf Power's on tour supporting their new album Back to the Web, and they're selling a tour-only CD (from Orange Twin Records), Treasures from the Trash Heap, which collects demos, live tracks, tracks from various compilations, and unreleased songs spanning 1994-2004.

The first thing you notice about Back to the Web is its unusual artwork, a grid of images--mostly eyes--culled from various sources, many familiar to Elf Power fans, such as the nude boy boxer from the cover of Creatures and a horned thing from Vainly Clutching at Phantom Limbs, with some fan art and photos mixed in. So you would expect the album to have a nostalgic feel, and I suppose it does. Back to the Web is a step back from their last, Walking with the Beggar Boys (2003)--an album that established the band as unexpected kings of the catchy arena-rock riff. Back to the Web, as the title emplies, plunges them back into the usual tangle of Elf Power influences: folk and psychedelia, mainly. Although it might be folly to place too much stock in the title; on their late 2005 tour, they were polling the audience for suggestions on a title, offering to take the winner to a water park if their title was chosen (thoughts of the Brady Bunch episode with the amusement park montage come to mind).

In the end, they settled for naming it after the album's closing song, which, in typically disjointed Elves fashion, feels as though it ought to be swapped with "Come Lie Down with Me," which starts the album out of left field. After the intriguing opening, you get "An Old Familiar Scene," the single and the album's strongest track. Although the lyrics are standard Andrew Rieger ("One by one the shapes become an old familiar scene/I watch them flicker slowly as I'm falling off to sleep"), the guitars build to something really stirring before the close. Then it's on to the subtle "Rolling Black Water," a very folky and simple number that was the odd tune out when Elf Power performed last Friday in Chicago. "Down by the shoreline, down by the sea/rolling black water, sing me to sleep"...there's a pattern here. Much of Back to the Web is dreamlike, the images like a hypnogogic hallucination of drifting shadows and creatures crawling out of the ground, and the songs, appropriately, begin to really blend together in the second half, although one of them, "All the World is Waiting," has been selected as their first video. I don't know. I like "King of Earth," with its intense, invoking, Mark Bolan-esque lyrics, and "Peel Back the Moon, Beware!", which is much more than a fantastic title. A real piece of storytelling, on this track Rieger walks you all the way through his dream, from throwing your cash into a fire to scaling a mountain into the clouds.

On the whole, however, the album drifts in and drifts out and doesn't leave as strong a footprint as some of their other work. Of their discography, it's closest in kin to the underrated and understated Creatures. If you listen to it in the right mood, you'll love it, but it's no breakthrough, and--as the backward-glimpsing cover art implies--it's not trying to be.

I have to admit I enjoyed the scattershot, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink tour CD, Treasures from the Trash Heap, a little more. But it's got something for everyone. A desperately-needed compilation of songs without a home, and supported by some interesting demos, covers, and live recordings, it provides the perfect retrospective of the band's history. And it has some of my favorite Elf Power songs: "Historical Ant Wars," from the first Happy Happy Birthday to Me release, pays home to "those tiny heroes" with blistering, distorted guitars; "Spiders," which should have been included on Back to the Web with its images of spiders drifting past the heads of sleeping folk; and the singalong cover of the Byrds' "Feel a Whole Lot Better," which appeared as a Kindercore single. But there are plenty of new noticeables: "All the Same," in particular, "It's Not Cold," a wonderful live performance of "The Arrow Flies Close" and even an Olivia Tremor Control cover, "Princess Knows" (aka "The Princess Turns the Key to Cubist Castle"). The Bolan influence is cemented with two T.Rex covers, "Dandy in the Underworld" and "Slider." (Now when will they cover Tyrannosaurus Rex? I want to hear the Elf Power version of "Once Upon the Seas of Abyssinia.") The demos, finally, are an interesting bunch: "Hole in My Shoe," one of their finest songs, is every bit as strong in this early form, and the "techno version" of "Invisible Men" is almost unidentifiable until you hear the lyrics. It's messy, it's peculiar, it's a blast. I wish the more respectable and mature Back to the Web were as much fun.

Back to the Web is available now from Rykodisc
Treasures from the Trash Heap is for sale by the band on tour

Back to the Web,
by Elf Power

1. Come Lie Down with Me (and Sing My Song)
2. An Old Familiar Scene
3. Rolling Black Water
4. King of Earth
5. Peel Back the Moon, Beware!
6. 23rd Dream
7. Somewhere Down the River
8. The Spider and the Fly
9. Forming
10. All the World is Waiting
11. Under the Northern Sky
12. Back to the Web
Total Running Time: 35:15

Treasures from the Trash Heap,
by Elf Power

1. Temporary Arm (country version)
2. Face in the Sand (demo)
3. Feel a Whole Lot Better (Byrds cover)
4. Dandy in the Underworld (T.Rex cover)
5. Another Face (demo)
6. Hole in My Shoe (demo)
7. All the Same
8. Rise High Giant Fly
9. Historical Ant Wars
10. Empty Pictures (demo)
11. Princess Knows (Olivia Tremor Control cover)
12. Invisible Men (demo)
13. Dark Circles
14. Underneath the Bunker (R.E.M. cover)
15. Arrow Flies Close (live at Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto)
16. Blackbirds
17. Invisible Men (techno version)
18. Run Through the Forest
19. I Know I
20. Spiders
21. It's Not Cold
22. Reuters (Wire cover, live at Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto)
23. Honey (Spacemen 3 cover, live at the Landfill, Athens, GA)
24. The Slider (T.Rex cover)
Total Running Time: 71:45