When examining long-dead subcultures, what is worth saving? And why now? 

In the case of the reverent but unpretentious documentary film The Elephant 6 Recording Co., the most obvious thing is the music, which still sounds as woozy, scrappy, and fresh as it did then, its influence now stronger than ever. The mechanics of the scene are interesting, too—with our skyrocketing costs of living and increasing social atomization, it’s worth looking at how this creative community functioned and wondering how such conditions could theoretically recur.

Plus, there’s the fact that I know most of these people, I lived in proximity to this scene during some of the most tender and formative years of my life, and so there’s no way I wasn’t going to watch this. That’s likely insufficient for you, rando on the internet, so here’s why you should give a shit.

Elephant 6 was a loose, incestuous collective of musicians and artists inspired by the Syd Barrett and Robert Wyatt side of late-‘60s rock, the dizzying eclecticism of ‘90s college radio, and, to a far lesser extent, drugs—what they were high on was their unique and potent mix of creativity and conviviality. (Robert Schneider, starmaking producer and leader of the Apples in Stereo, also gives the impression that he eats entire bags of sugarcubes for breakfast.)  It started in the college town of Ruston, Louisiana, then moved to the more counterculturally prestigious college town of Athens, Georgia, where it exerted a lasting influence in indie rock that continues to inspire more materially successful artists such as Tame Impala and the like.

The Elephant 6 Recording Co. works fine as a talking-head documentary profiling the main players and ideas that fired the circuit. It also indulges in some fun stylistic choices that more closely align it with its source material. The colors, sound, and sensibilities of E6 are well represented, creating an effect that can be discontinuous and disorienting but remains wide-eyed and big-hearted. The interviewers do yeoman’s work in coaxing forth the charisma of people who aren’t particularly comfortable on camera. And the movie has much worthwhile to say about this subculture in particular and the nature of creative communities in general.

The key to Elephant 6 was the magic of the potlatch. The minimal cost of living in Athens created the sort of low-stakes conditions that would be hard to replicate now without something like universal basic income. The small-town close quarters made it easy for everyone to play together all the time—it made more sense to have 20 rotating multi-instrumentalists in your band than to stick with three core members, and the relative absence of zero-sum rivalry kept the borders porous. The shows were big, raucous parties. “Having the cats wander into the room,” says the ever-quotable Schneider. “That felt like success.”

Collaboration was all-pervasive and paramount, empowering a movement exponentially greater than the sum of its parts. “I don’t know how to build things,” says Julian Koster of the kitchen-sink art-glam outfit the Music Tapes. “I never took shop. But everybody knew how to do something.” There was little downside if you wanted to “call in sick to work, take a bunch of downers, and play our spacey music,” as a typical weekday is described by Elf Power’s Laura Carter, perhaps the most exuberantly punk-rock person I’ve ever encountered. And, with this crowd, there was always a probability greater than zero that pure magic would occur, particularly if Schneider came through to run the boards.

A few of the third-party commentators overstate the importance of E6 more than its principals ever would, as though the film, lacking as it is in dramatic falls from grace or Some Kind of Monster-type interpersonal fireworks, needs to justify its existence to people who don’t already own all this stuff on vinyl thrice over. The film is more fun when it takes the context for granted and lets the artists relax and luxuriate in their good-natured weirdness. It really comes together whenever Great Lakes member Dan Donahue, who distinguishes himself through his ability to complete a sentence without changing the subject, appears on screen.

However, it would inaccurate to say E6 wasn’t, or isn’t, important. By the standards of legacy lo-fi indie rock, this stuff is crucial. Two acts merit special consideration. 

There’s Olivia Tremor Control, a push-pull between the late Pet Sounds classicist Bill Doss (Rest In Pop) and the William S. Burroughs-loving mixed-media artist and rambling psychedelicist Will Cullen Hart, which produced E6’s most quintessential and representative albums before dissolving in inevitable creative tension. And there’s Neutral Milk Hotel, the project of erstwhile OTC member Jeff Mangum, which released the haunting, hyperliterate, beyond-iconic In the Aeroplane Over the Sea in 1998 and drew the sort of attention to Athens it hadn’t seen since the B-52s and R.E.M. It was Mangum who unintentionally gave his prankster pals a chance to convince gullible journalists that they all lived together on a cult compound.

After that unlikely success, Mangum acquired a slackjawed group of local followers he didn’t really want (the sorts of “followers” who physically followed him up and down Washington Street), got a lot more attention than he was comfortable with as a sensitive introvert, and conspicuously made himself scarce. He describes his flight from the eye of Sauron as a “nervous breakdown,” and I’m not going to take that away from him, but, listen. I’m a certified nutjob myself. I know Mangum a bit. And I find him to be pretty fucking sane, almost to a fault. I’ve always considered his disappearance an uncommonly healthy reaction to a situation that must have felt confusing and silly.

I moved to Athens in the summer following Aeroplane’s release, when E6 was still going strong but getting maybe a tad bloated. It was still easy to forge friendships with fascinating folks by just showing up for things. Before my mutually abusive relationship with booze choked off my social life, I was tight with a few of these people. I still love them, some more than others. Living in Athens when I did set the tone for the rest of my life—these people and their fellow travelers showed me that, not only did I have the ability to create cool art, but it was more of a responsibility, and I could make it my default setting.

I also led the band Splash Conception, unsung heroes of one of the last waves that followed in the wake of E6’s success, right as the initial movement showed signs of running its course as subcultures do. So it goes. (If the Afghan Whigs and Camper Van Beethoven can get back together, there’s basically nothing I can do to stop a Splash Conception reunion from happening. I just need to kidnap our guitarist.)

So, why now? Why not. It always comes back to the music, which stands up better than I would have expected. The charm of the personalities also translates more effectively than I would have put money on. (Donahue raises the average considerably.) And the movie provides some clues on how to nurture a uniquely potent creative movement:

• Undeniable passion and skill leavened with a lack of self-importance
• A few standout stars setting the pace
• Low stakes, close quarters, wild parties, and just enough interpersonal friction
• An aesthetic sensibility well-defined enough to be recognizable and open-ended enough to accommodate a range of ideas, preferences, and happy accidents
• A cool, strange mythos that can still encapsulate what felt so fresh about a particular sound, time, and place, decades into the future

On all counts, The Elephant 6 Recording Co. delivers. Tune in, jam out, and wish you’d been there, or could swing by for an unfocused but productive weekend.

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