Remember Elephant Jake? If you know me outside of the realm of Substream premieres, chances are that I haven’t given you much time to forget about them. If by some chance you only know me from Substream premieres, allow me to catch you up to speed. Elephant Jake is a young band from not Upstate New York that blurs the lines between acts like Modern Baseball and Free Throw — gut-wrenching moments of deprecative self-realization are married to the off-kilter charm of both Colin and Sal’s delectably quirky vocals.
That last fact is something that I didn’t touch on the last time I spoke with y’all about Elephant Jake — the band has two vocalists. You’re bound to have a favorite, but realistically, they feel like two sides of the same coin. “F.D.C” was a Sal song through and through, so I’m very excited to team up with My Parent’s Basement sessions to premiere one of my favorite songs that Colin has ever written for the band, “Freshman Fifteen.” The song is about feeling socially awkward and how easy it is to feel completely isolated in a crowd of people — an idea that is thematically reinforced by lyrics like “Forgive me for giving up and looking down at my feet/I never noticed how much noise there is in silence.”
When asked about his track, Colin said: “Freshman 15 is a story about my freshman year at college, when people do things they might regret to try to fit in with all the new people there. My girlfriend’s roommates were meanies and we still tried to hang out with them despite the amount of gossiping and trash talking that they did, so as the year progressed we eventually got sick of it and started staying in by ourselves and it was better. The first verse is me talking to my girlfriend, the second verse is me talking to myself”
The My Parents Basement Session for “Freshman Fifteen” can be seen above. The band is currently working on LP2 and I can tell you right now, it’s incredible. Stay locked to Substream for more news on that release.
