Note before the review: I have graciously received a number of promo albums from bands and record labels as of late. This will be the forum in which I post my reviews of them. I will be using the star system, with four stars being the highest amount any one album can receive. And, in the spirit of favoring the hometown bands (but not really), I am going to start this off with Elsinore’s new EP (Note in the note: Lead singer and guitarist Ryan Groff was nice enough to drop this EP off while I was at work. No matter what you think about their music, you cannot deny that they are trying hard, and I couldn’t have appreciated the gesture more. Thanks Ryan.)

Elsinore: “The General EP,” ***1/2

Elsinore has undergone quite a change since their debut album “Nothing for Design.” The Champaign band’s rootsy, acoustic-based sound has morphed into a more powerful, electric style, while still retaining a lot of the Americana sense.

It seems like the transition has not been without its growing pains though. The band’s second full-length, still unreleased at this point, has been promised to be put out a number of times, and I guess it will happen when it happens. In the meantime, Elsinore has put out the three-song “The General EP” to help tide fans over and to make new ones as they head out on tour.

The EP starts out with what may be their best song to date, “The General.” The guitar riff, while a bit simplistic, is powerful, and the rest of the band’s playing creates a rather unique groove that is propulsive as well as agile. From there comes lead singer and guitarist Ryan Groff’s voice (one of Elsinore’s strongest suits) kicks in, and the song just takes off. In the past, the rest of the band has, at times, come off as a simply good backing band for Groff, and while his vocals are fantastic, the band (which includes bassist Chris Eitel, keyboardist Mark Woolwine and drummer Dave Pride) is gelling and becoming more of a unit (complete with a harmony-laden interlude in the middle). It is a gem, and one can only hope the band is chasing whatever they found for it. Kudos.

Elsinore is going to be hard pressed to find songs as good as “The General” though. Both of the other songs, while still very good (”Antonymity” is a very good link between the band of old and the band of new, and a stripped down “Wooden Houses” is held up by a simple piano and Groff’s once-again great vocals), cannot live up to the title track. The 3.5 star rating is a testament to how good the title track is, but the band needs to work hard if they are going to craft a 12-song album as good as this. Best of luck.

Bear with me as I catch up on what I haven’t written yet. I now have consistent internet, so I will catch up.

On Saturday, after my interview with Elsinore, I made my way over to the Camping Stage to watch a band called Uglysuit. The band’s sound was quite different from what most of the Summer Camp bands sound like, with them going more for an atmospheric indie rock feel (even though, I must say, the band still dressed like hippies).

Unfortunately, different does not always mean good, and Uglysuit did not impress me. I don’t think I’m that hard to impress, but when an artist or a band is so much in their own world that they are not conscious they have an audience watching them, there is a problem. The songs did not grab me at all either, so it was just nothing special.

After watching Uglysuit for about 10 minutes, I made my way over to a set by a band called Bump. I had never heard of them, but ended up being quite impressed with their set. They were jammers, no doubt, but the music went somewhere. It seemed like everything they played had a purpose, and it was refreshing to hear that (I know I don’t report on a lot of bands, but rest assured that there was a lot of pointless noodling in this set. A jam-band fan or not, not every band was amazing). The band had good grooves and cool sounds, and from what I saw, they knew what they were doing.

Finally, before Elsinore, I went to the Sunshine Stage to see what was going on. What I saw was a band called Lotus. From what I could see (and photographed), they were okay, nothing to write home about. They jammed, sure, but it was nothing that memorable (I apologize for being so brief about their performance, but in all honesty, they did not grab me much, so there is not much else to day. I did not stay long enough to really elaborate).

At 3:30 I went back over to the Camping Stage to see Elsinore. I have seen the Champaign band a couple of times, and they are always pretty good. When I describe them to people, I describe them as a good version of Maroon 5, without the faux-soul. While that may not be entirely accurate, the band started out with “The General.” the best of the new batch of new songs they have been dragging out as of late. Unfortunately, starting with the best is not always a good idea, and while the songs that followed (that I saw. I was only able to stay 20 minutes because I had to photograph Umphrey’s McGee at 4) did not live up to “The General.”

That being said, frontman/guitarist Ryan Groff has a great voice that can carry any song, and the band is only getting tighter. With more shows and a new album, I really think the band has a chance of getting known outside of Champaign.

Then came Umphrey’s. The band started strong, with some rocking tunes (forgive me, I am not very familiar with their music), but quickly turned into the type of jamming that is not necessary. It became clean, smooth and pointless. That may be the appeal, but it doesn’t lend itself to good jamming. I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say it may not have been their strongest set, but I was not impressed nonetheless (even with bringing up the percussionist from the Chicago Afrobeat Project didn’t help. They did not utilize him well at all).

Elsinore is a four piece rock band and Champaign mainstay. With their new material in hand, the band is going to be touring the West Coast for the first time this summer. The band played Summer Camp on Saturday afternoon. Prior to their performance, I was able to talk to lead vocalist/guitarist Ryan Groff, drummer Dave Pride, keyboardist Mark Woolwine, and bassist Chris Eitel.

Eric: I think every artist I have interviewed is one that would not consider themselves part of a jam band. If you are not a jam band and have a different sound than the overall feel of the festival, how do you think you will fit in?

Dave: We’re hoping that people that come to these festivals don’t exclusively listen to jam bands. With the way that Bonnaroo is going, along with all these other summer festivals, people are branching out. I mean, I don’t just listen to indie rock.

Ryan: It seems to be going that way too. That was our hope, and then we got here, we looked around, and definitely the majority is still jam bands, with the same guitar riffs and everything, but then the different bands still have people that are into it. The people like good music, and not just jam band music. We will try to be good music for them.

Eric: I know your first album is a bit rootsier though than the material you have been playing recently. Are you going to try to parlay that towards the audience, since that is more of the direction of the festival?

Chris: Absolutely not.

Ryan: I think the fact that we haven’t seen any acoustic guitars makes me feel like we don’t have to worry about that. We weren’t going to do it anyway, but people here like rock and roll, and all the instrumentation is kind of like what we have. They have a keyboard, guitar, drums and bass and they just play different things on it. We are just going to have the same instrumentation and play straight-up pop-rock.

Eric: What was the mindset behind getting away from the first album’s (Nothing for Design) sound to what it is now?

Chris: It kind of just happened. Ryan started playing electric guitar instead of acoustic, and I added distortion to the bass riffs, and Mark added keyboard and a synthesizer with some new sounds.

Ryan: And Dave plays a real drum set now.

Dave: It made less and less sense to keep Latin percussion setup.

Eric: Did it just kind of happen though? Did it get old?

Ryan: It was really gradual. One of us, at any given show, would say “I really don’t want to play that song anymore” and it was always that really Americana, folky song. Then, as soon as a rocker came out songwriting-wise, we were saying “Man, I really feel that,” so we all were hopping on board. Then all my songs come out that way and all of our part writing comes that way, so everything we were writing, we were feeling. We liked that straight rock tempo here or that distortion there. It just kind of started to happen.

Chris: It went from Ryan and I writing songs and everybody else basically playing whatever part that popped into our head, with Dave playing the straight beat to us really taking a lot of time to arrange the songs individually. Dave stepped up and would say “We need to play it this way right now. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, we can try something else.”

Ryan: We had played our songs simply. We started the songs, and stuck to them. I think that once we started realizing we were fixing and approving songs, we realized we needed to write new songs, because we were trying to make old songs better, when all we need to do is write new ones. Like Chris is saying, we started to write songs together. Chris would have an idea or I would have an idea, and that’s especially with the song that’s on the single we’re putting out in a few weeks called “The General.” Chris had the words, and I had the chord structure, and we changed the feel and added things and this riff came out, and all of a sudden we all got it. We all saw it with this one song. We said “Yes, that’s it. That’s exactly how it happens.”

Mark: That’s been every song since; that’s how we write them. Ryan comes with the riff and with a vocal melody. Then we sit down and hammer it out until it’s in the shape that we want to play it.

Eric: Is it easier to do it that way?

Ryan: It’s great, it’s so rewarding.

Mark: It makes you feel good when you finish it. Everybody will agree that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Ryan: I’d say eight of the 10 songs on the new record have come out that way too, which is good. The two oldest ones were the last of the old group, but all the other ones we feel good about. We’re not sick of any of them, so it really, really helps to keep us going and be excited about the new record.

Eric: At this point, where you are as a band, you may be playing shows where people aren’t coming to see Elsinore. They may be coming to see the headliner. How does the band deal with that when you are playing a show?

Chris: We just do what we do, and if you hit five people, that’s five people that you got that wouldn’t have been there to see you before. We’ve gotten a lot of fans that way, with people that didn’t have any idea who we were before bought a t-shirt and a CD at the end of the show.

Ryan: That’s the mindset that we have to have because of the more extended touring that we are doing. Now that we’re getting out of Illinois, we’re doing the whole Midwest. Then we will be doing the whole West Coast this summer. Now we have to be in that mindset all the time. We have to play exactly how we should so that people know who this band is, and they can say “I really like it. I hope they come back.”

Chris: Nobody starts out with a group of fans.

Eric: When is the new record coming out?

Ryan: We’re trying really hard to not pick a date so we don’t have to finish things. I just got married, so we took a couple weeks off, and I’m trying to finish the lyrics to some of the songs, and there are still some string parts and horn parts we want to put on there, so we want to have time to do it and not worry. We never set a date, we just kind of said “It would be nice to have this in six months,” and then we said “It would be nice to have this in nine months.” It’ll probably be a year now. We started last October officially.

Chris: The single is coming out pretty soon though.

Eric: Has it been a frustrating experience?

Chris: At times. It’s hard to do it, with the work schedules. We all have different jobs, so it’s finding a chunk of three or four days that we can just go spend all that time in the studio, it can be really difficult.

Ryan: Some parts are frustrating, like when you can’t play your part exactly how it should be. If one of us can’t do what we need to do, the other three get kind of frustrated and get pissed off because they have to wait so much, and the one doing it gets pissed off because they can’t get it. It happened to all of us.

Eric: Who have you guys seen so far that you have enjoyed?

All: Flaming Lips.

Dave: Girl Talk was good.

Ryan: For me it was the Flaming Lips that made the whole weekend worth it. We could not like any of the other bands and we would still think about the Flaming Lips last night. So we’re just hoping to get blown away by The Roots tonight.

Chris: I’m looking forward to seeing Blind Melon I used to be a fan before their singer died, so I’m interested to see what they do with this new guy.

Eric: Finally, what have you guys been listening to lately?

Chris: I’ve been listening to The National and Okkervil River pretty much nonstop for the last month.

Mark: Spoon.

Ryan: The new Radiohead.

Dave: Bon Iver. Sigur Rós. I had never really listened to them before and I just got their CD Takk…

I am sitting in my car, transcribing my interview with Elsinore. All of them were great guys, and what I saw of their show was really good too. The interview and everything else that I saw during the day will be posted in the morning (or tonight, if I have the energy).

I just wanted to make a little comment about journalism etiquette. When you are in a photo pit, with a press pass, you are not watching the show as a fan. You are instead watching it as a journalist. Yes, you are allowed to show interest, but you are not technically a member of the audience. This includes not doing anything the audience would do, such as catch things the band members throw out for the actual audience. As a journalist, or a member of the press, you are to remain neutral. You have given up your right as a member of the audience and must act like a professional. Nothing less should be expected.

It’s people like the ones I describe above that make having a press pass that less of a special thing. I had to struggle a bit to get these passes for an actual publication, which I thankfully did thanks to Jay Goldberg Events & Entertainment. But others were let in as well, and us in what I consider the real media are given a bad name by the actions of others. They make us all look bad, and it should not be tolerated. The press pass is a privilege, and it should be treated and honored as one.

That’s my view at least. It really was a good day.