The White Elephant
Cocaine Love Letter
thewhiteelephantband.com
Cocaine Love Letter was born while the band was taking some downtime. Chris Rohr and bandmate Ron Coleman both ended up writing a bunch of acoustic demos during this time and decided to turn them into three albums, which will all eventually be released for free on their website.
“It’s a lo-fi DIY project we are putting out in chunks,” Chris explained, “We will be releasing a couple more albums worth of songs in the coming months. We want to give each group of songs a little time to marinate.”
The result is a low-key blues and folk rock affair with a contemplative soul. On the refrain of “Bottle,” without the normal White Elephant obfuscation of layered distortion, the vocals are pushed front-and-center to reveal raw road-worn lyrics: “That old bottle’s got me lyin’ again, and I don’t need to tell you ’cause you know where I’ve been.” These are sentiments of a more seasoned songwriter. “High on the Hog” is a drinkin’, cussin’, workin’ class blues lament to a woman who has aspirations of upward mobility: “You ain’t worth losin’ but you ain’t worth keepin’ around.” The bottle-neck acoustic slide is a fantastic touch—it puts me in the mood for my vintage copy of Exile on Main Street.
Cocaine Love Letter gives us a new sound from White Elephant. Considering that it started as individual projects by Rohr and Coleman, the album is balanced and satisfyingly cohesive, revealing a new depth and maturity to the band that I’m frankly pretty excited about. It will be interesting to see how the next release of these acoustic sketchbooks turn out, and I hope to see this sound incorporated into White Elephant’als next studio albums.
