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"'The Chess Hotel' is a literal, wound-up, highly emotional collection. It presents thirteen songs about the actualities of life and love in a small town. The songs sound, according to (lead singer) Owen Thomas, alternately ""loose,"" ""noisy,"" ""catty,"" ""riffy,"" and, not least, ""loud."" For The Elms' purposes here, he argues that hi-fi studio creations would have been dead wrong. It would have been counter to logic. And that is something that Owen Thomas doesn't like.
The songs on 'The Chess Hotel' use robust rock and roll to plead that case; the music is sonically rooted in the band's admiration for the work of '60s and '70s titans such as The Kinks and The Who. The Elms never succumb to classic-rock replicas, though. They get in your face bringing their cause. Yet the band's longing is intense for a connected sense of what feels like logic."
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