Elle Belle - No Signal (2018)

In 2013, L.A. singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Christopher Pappas underwent a relatively significant creative transformation. Struggling to remain inspired by a solo project he'd been working on, the former New Englander landed on the concept of creating an alter ego to fuel his more reckless whims. Ditching his previous work, he began writing and recording as Elle Belle, a swaggering experimental pop maverick with a penchant for spacy electro-organic psychedelia and an overflowing bag of big ideas. His 2016 debut, Wako Gumbo, was just that: a heaping 20-song platter of renewed creativity that yielded some strong standouts, but could have benefited from some healthy editing. His follow-up, 2018's cinematic No Signal, is an altogether more streamlined outing that also takes the conceptual form of a breakup album. Interestingly, the disintegrating relationship at the heart of these nine songs isn't with a partner, but with an entire country. Feeling distraught and listless after the 2016 presidential election, Pappas spent a winter back home in the comfort of his native New Hampshire. Trying to process his emotions, he turned to writing and found himself describing feelings of grief and betrayal regarding his own relationship with America and its politics. Beginning with the darkly glimmering title track, the songs he recorded frame the country's widespread social and partisan divisions within intimate breakup scenes of sadness, loss, and the first wary steps into a new reality. Standouts like the tender synth pop anthem "American Dreamer" and the sparse post-punk of "In the Garden" try to make sense of opposing views in an intriguing way, the latter bitterly wondering "Do you love him? Do you plan to stay the night?" Thinly cloaked as his views may be, Pappas offers a fresh take on the nation's social climate while also expanding his sonic territory. Bright and more overtly synthetic than its predecessor, No Signal has a very direct '80s influence in its production, with an eerie mix of warmth and compressed harshness that somehow suggests fatigue in the digital age. After the fascinating but scattershot Wako Gumbo, it's nice to hear Elle Belle zone in on a distinct and unified concept with this solid second release.