The Black Magic Show (2006)

by B. J. Carter
Coastal Journal staff

By all accounts, The Black Magic Show was supposed to be an album that changed everything.  Those indie-savvy enough to hear their off-kilter debut Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid figured Elefant probably had it in them to make such an album.  Frontman Diego Garcia, besides being voted “sexiest frontman” by some fashion magazine, clearly had an ear for ingeniously awkward lyrical moments and lurching music that suggested a relationship to his world so tense it made him nauseous.  The name-dropping commenced: Robert Smith, Morrissey, Bowie, and fellow Anglophilic contemporaries Interpol, the Killers, and the Stills.  Sunlight was the Donnie Darko of the “new new wave” acts.

Tough act to follow.  Though “the sophomore jinx” is nothing but an arbitrary phenomenon drawn up by critics to help them make room for the next “next big thing” in their pubs, there’s no question that The Black Magic Show suffered from commerical pressure.  Even so, the anticipation for new Elefant material was by no means hysterical.  By 2006, everyone seemed to be getting used to the idea that they would probably be disappointed with their new favorite band’s second record, beginning with the Strokes’ Room on Fire (probably their best record from top to bottom anyway).  Though I kept reading that PR spinners were ranting and raving about the new Elefant, I hadn’t heard a thing, and when it arrived in early 2006 as a digital release, it did so with little fanfair. 

At least in the US.  Apparently, Europe loves these guys.  The grainy black-and-white video for controversial Magic Show single “Lolita” had commentators foaming at the mouth, while in the US, the video was never going to see the light of day due to its disturbingly literal interpretation of Nabokov.  There were other problems, though.  The “Lolita” move seemed an overly calculated attempt to be “edgy” and “important” when in fact the song itself is just a decent dance number with a sleazy little guitar lick.  The guys in Elefant couldn’t help themselves; they just had to tell everyone how “different” their new record would be.  They published their sentiments on their website:

Magic is anything but child’s play.  To be a successful conjurer, one must create the illusion of achieving the seemingly impossible, executed with uncanny ease.  The audience’s attention must be captivated by one theatrical display, while behind the scenes the real work takes place under wraps.  And so it is with The Black Magic Show, the sophomore release from Elefant.  Scratch the surface, and what the New York quartet has on offer is a riveting set of dynamic pop-rock.  But as you pull back the curtain and investigate in closer detail, it becomes apparent that the album operates on a variety of intricate levels.

Well, that’s true of any good work of popular art.  When you read this stuff, you can’t help but think that Elefant’s management was incredibly worried that no one would be able to hear all of this complexity in the songs, so they wanted to draw attention to it beforehand.  They go on to describe a record with a myriad of cultural influences, from Russian literature to Black Orpheus to Garcia’s heritage in Argentina.  In other words, a record that just might change everything.

And then Pitchfork, bane of my existence, decided for the rest of us that retro acts were no longer cool by 2006, the year Magic Show came out.  I believe they scored it a 3.6.  So much for the Brooklyn hipsters Garcia may have been counting on to buy his record.  Strike two.

Then there’s the album itself.  Where it sounded like they were listening quite heavily to the Smiths on Sunlight, the Magic Show has more to do with glam rock flirtations ala Pulp and Suede.  As it so happens, they worked with Ed Buller, who has produced both Pulp and Suede.  Trace elements of everything they spoke of were there, and it sounded like Elefant, only tighter, more muscular, and expansive than before.

But it sounded a little empty, and what we now know is that there’s nothing worse than an empty pop record.  Pop can be all things to all people; it’s alright for them to sound fun and meaningless, but on some level they should enlighten as well.  Why make a pop record that sounds empty and is in fact empty, emotionless, and barren of creativity?

Reviews for the Magic Show read something like that or, worse, that it wasn’t even a fun record to dance to.  And on some level, these reviews were right on.  The record’s biggest flaw is its production.  There's an ill-suited metallic sheen that sucks the life out of songs like "Lolita" and "It's a Shame." And too many of the songs coast on slick rhythms that make them hard to distinguish. "Why" and "Don't Wait" sound awfully similar to each other.

But there’s enough atmosphere here to make the Magic Show a good if not greatdriving-into-the-city-on-a-Friday-night record.   And hey, if you can make it to the fourth or fifth listen, you can probably make out some elliptical storytelling.  The plot runs roughly like this:

A devil (played by Diego Garcia) casts a spell on Manhattan and the "freaks" come out to play.  The protagonist is a hipster (played by Diego Garcia) who goes out on a Ulyssean Friday night to some parties where he's tempted by a man calling himself "The Clown" (played by Diego Garcia) to indulge in narcotics, what I can only hope is a figurative Lolita, and some Sirens alluding either to the cops or supermodels. 

Both the Sirens and Lolita figure show up later in the evening, and his lover (played by Diego Garcia) comes to one of the parties and argues with him about choosing nightlife over her on the song "Why."  He offers a half-hearted apology that's more like an "I told you so" on "My Apology" and eventually gives in to all those temptations.  Next thing you know, it's sunrise, and he’ll probably do it all over again.

Though remote, we have to accept the possibility that the hollow aesthetic of the record is calculated.  It’s  possible, just possible, that The Black Magic Show is a kind of grand summation of the 80s nostalgia that so gripped college kids from about 2003 to 2005 as nothing but borrowed nostalgia, and that after having authored said statement, the band would pilot New York’s music scene into the next phase of histrionics.  In that sense, it resembles Pynchon’s version of postmodernism more so than Nabokov’s, where the spectacle of the thing trumps the individual’s participation in it.
Probably not, but it’s fun to pretend.