Elika, Trying Got Us Nowhere EP

On seven-song EP Trying Got Us Nowhere, Elika, an electro-indie-pop band led by a female singer, is sure to have you swaying. It’s shoegazey and lush, not quite fitting into the 1980s. It’s nice mood music, for the background, sleeping, driving, or headphones. It has an ambient feel, using light drumming, a keyboard, and an acoustic guitar, but occasionally growing into a harder sound with an electric guitar.

Like Azure Ray, there are two singers, but one is male and one female, Brian Wenckebach and Evagelia Maravelias. They have that feel like when you’re listening to Abba, though, where you forget there’s even a male in the band because you hardly hear from him vocally. Elika has a Ladytron vibe, with Maravelias’s mid-range vocals which don’t go too far in one direction or the other. She also sings in almost a monotone, even when the lyrics become more urgent, but sounds less robotic than the females in Ladytron. Her voice echoes in a pretty way, clear even when it goes electronic, and it’s sometimes layered over herself. Most of the songs build into a noisier climax from a soft beginning.

The first song and first single, “The Whip,” starts off the EP with distorted guitars. The music video features a spinning motion sequence of the band playing in a room, for the most part devoid of color. On “To the End,” Maravelias sings, “there is no philosophy in saying the right thing when I am not listening.” Second single “Let Down” has a catchy melody and keyboard part, and she sings the lyrics, “I should have read my sister’s books as a young girl,” as she searches for answers on how to be in love. This music video is completely black and white, and split in half, with a picture on each side of the band playing and sitting outside. Track seven, “Eliana”, repeats the “all I have is nothing” theme and makes an interesting end to the CD, with its breakdown slow-motion effect.