Album Review: Elliott Green - Everything I Lack

“For fans of Interpol, The Killers, The Faint, and Depeche Mode.”

For a majority of my young life, from, say, junior high and high school, throughout college, until maybe a year or so after, I spent a lot of time in what was commonly referred to as the “Entertainment” section of big box stores. 

Before I was able to drive myself to them, on trips to a Walmart or Shop-ko with my mother, I would often wander away from her as she made her way through the store, and I could be found aimlessly browsing the racks of alphabetized compact discs, occasionally purchasing one if I had money burning a hole in the wallet kept secure in my back pocket by a long metal chain which was clipped to a belt loop.

In college, when I was in my early 20s and did not have a car of my own, I would tag along if someone in my group of friends needed to run to Target, or a late-night trip to the 24-hour Walmart on the edge of town—again, while they walked through the aisles, gathering what they needed, I would find myself browsing the CDs, and again, would occasionally purchase one if I was so inclined with what little money I often had, which was somehow always still burning a hole in the wallet that somehow still kept secure in my back pocket by a long metal chain that was still clipped to a belt loop. 

And this more than likely would have been at some point in early 2005, on a trip to Wal-Mart with a handful of friends, where an album cover—bright pink and green, and faced out on a higher rack above the rest, caught my attention.

I don’t know a ton about the history of Victory Records—a bulk of its Wikipedia entry is dedicated to “Criticisms,” additionally listing three lawsuits between the label itself and bands that had once been signed to it while it was active. Founded in the late 80s, you could arguably say the label hit its stride by releasing records from the crop of up-and-coming, early 2000s emo and punk bands—Taking Back Sunday and Thursday, specifically, were among those who issued their breakout albums on Victory Records.

Albums by Taking Back Sunday and Thursday, specifically, were ubiquitous in big box store “Entertainment” departments in the early-to-mid 2000s—stores like Target and Walmart could be found all over the country, and the demographic who were inclined to buy CDs by bands like Taking Back Sunday and Thursday had relatively easy access to.

Say what you will about Victory Records, as a whole, or the soiled reputation of its founder Tony Brummel, but as a label head, regardless of how bands or artists felt they were treated while on the roster, he at least knew how, and where, to put his marketing efforts.

And before the names of marquee emo bands, and even before the well-known controversies and criticisms with the label and its founder, when I think of Victory Records, I think of how Brummel, presumably, was behind how new artists were advertised.

“For Fans Of”

Today, upwards of 20 years later, the common way and perhaps a slightly more tactful way of saying this, specifically when it comes to music, is the expression “recommended if you like,” but I can remember seeing a number of CDs in a place like Wal-Mart, from a band signed to Victory, with a large hype sticker affixed to the shrink wrap of the jewel case with the expression “For Fans Of,” and then a list of three or four subjectively similar bands, usually in a large, bold font, to grab the attention of someone browsing.

This tactic—like, this specific tactic from Victory Records, worked on me in what would have been early 2005 on a trip to Walmart, during the final semester of my last year in college.

“For fans of Interpol, The Killers, The Faint, and Depeche Mode.”

The sticker itself is almost the width of the album’s cover—black, with a number of green arrows pointed in the direction of the bands rattled off: The Killers and Depeche Mode¹ in bright green, with Interpol and The Faint in white. In a smaller typeset above, written in a shade of dark pink, the words “For Fans Of.”

The album, released in the autumn of 2004, was the debut full-length from Action Action—a relatively new and seemingly cobbled-together outfit, comprised of players from other, short-lived bands from the early 2000s.

Action Action, themselves, were not long for this world—releasing two additional albums in 2006 and 2010, respectively, before ceasing to exist. 

And if you are familiar with the layout of the “Entertainment” department of certain big box stores of the late 1990s and even into the early 2000s, you may recall, perhaps with fondness, the listening stations installed within the racks of CDs—a pair of headphones that was more than likely broken, or barely held together, plugged into an apparatus that allowed you to scan a CD’s barcode, and would often allow you to preview around three songs from the album.

Between this sticker on the front—I liked The Killers! I liked Interpol!—and the short previews of a few songs from the album that I heard through a pair of mangled headphones while standing in the CD aisle of the Dubuque, Iowa Walmart, I am uncertain now as to why, but at that moment I had convinced myself that I should buy Don’t Cut Your Fabric to This Year’s Fashion by Action Action—plunking down, at the very least, $13.99 for it.

A contemporary analogy, and perhaps a more complicated one than needed, to describe Action Action: if you were out with your family at the store, and were to ask, “Mom, can we get The Killers and Interpol?,” and if your mom were to quickly, and curtly, respond by saying, “We have The Killers and Interpol at home!,” Action Action, and Don’t Cut Your Fabric is, actually, what you have at home. 

Kind of close. But not quite. 

And this, or at least some version of this, is perhaps at the heart of why I am so remiss when writing about music, to draw comparisons between one artist and another—and if there is simply no way around it, I am even more remiss to lean into, and onto, that comparison, and coast on it through the analysis of the artist, or album, I am writing about. 

It might, perhaps, make my job as a music writer a little less labor intensive if I were to focus more on who, other than themselves, a performer sounds like, or is reminiscent of—but in doing that, regardless of how apparent those influences or similarities might be, it sells that artist in question short, and doesn’t give them the opportunity to stand on their own.

*

I find, at least in the last year or so, when I write about music, I also seem to be writing about how I discover new music, or hear about an artist—it is not a device done out of the need to explain myself, or why I have selected a specific artist or album to analyze, but more as a means of breaking the fourth wall, a bit, between myself as the music writer and you as the person reading what I have written.

It doesn’t happen as often as it perhaps once did in the early years of writing about music, but there was a time when I was often asked how, or where, I hear about the things I was both choosing to write about and simply listen to for enjoyment. My response then is similar to my response now, if you were to ask the same question: the internet. 

Though, perhaps, the various pockets of the internet that I frequent to learn about new artists or albums today are not the same pockets I frequented a decade ago.

There is a possibility, though I am uncertain how large, that the algorithm (you’re a sad white person who likes sad white person music—here is some more) would have put Elliott Green, and specifically her second full-length, Everything I Lack, on my radar at some point, but it would have been at some point in November of last year when I came across her name on Twitter—around the time of the album’s initial announcement.

But where, exactly, on Twitter—I am unable to recall. 

*

And I would, if I may, like to take the opportunity to get this all out of the way now—Elliott Green sounds an awful lot like Julien Baker.

Baker, and her first two albums, Sprained Ankle and Turn Out The Lights, have been name-checked, or used as reference points, in all of the press that I read w/r/t Green, and Everything I Lack. 

In a short piece about one of the album’s advanced singles, “Goodness,” Flood Magazine writes, “Fans of Baker, her boygenius cohorts Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, Indigo Sparks, or even Cassandra Jenkins: you’re going to love this record.”

“For Fans Of.”

There are myriad similarities between Baker and Green—I am unable, despite my best efforts, to ignore this. 

They are both young women who play the guitar and sing incredibly heartbreaking, often sparsely arranged, songs, and their voices often operate from a similar rage, though Green regularly shows a lot more restraint in how she uses her voice on Everything I Lack—how she lets it rise and where she allows it to fall.

And I will admit that because there are so many similarities, and because Julien Baker’s name, and work, are mentioned so often with what I have been able to find about Elliott Green, it is hard to go into Everything I Lack without all of that in mind. But regardless of how easy, or challenging, it might be for you as a listener not to draw comparisons, or lean into those comparisons during your time spent with the album, it is a harrowing, beautiful album worthy of your ear, and Green is an artist who can stand on her own outside of the comparisons to and perhaps influence of another artist.

*

I hesitate to refer to Everything I Lack as a “concept album,” but across its ten tracks, the further you wade into it, it becomes very apparent that the songs are loosely connected by imagery, ideas, and themes—a “song cycle,” if you will, that doesn’t exactly depict a relationship during its final moments, through a messy, volatile dissolution, to any kind of resolve in the end, but Green, in every song, is writing, and projecting, to an off-stage “you,” and trying her best to work through the various phases of a broken heart, for better and for worse (often worse), and seemingly doing it all in real-time.

There are moments, specifically in the album’s first half, when Green’s voice, and the sparse instrumentation she has chosen (often a piano or guitar with minimal atmospheric accompaniment), barely rise above a whisper. There is a quiet, intense intimacy to Everything I Lack, both in how it sounds but also in the way these feelings are being so openly shared—it is as if Green is a close friend, sitting across from you on the couch, confiding in you as she tries to unpack and make any sense at all, if possible, of these often heavy and uncomfortable emotions.

There are a few places on Everything I Lack where Green plays the silences in between notes and chords like they are an instrument all of their own, and the opening track, “Friendly Advice,” is one of those places where she lets these enormous spaces form and hang for seemingly longer than they should between her tentative, delicate notes plunked out on the piano, and her quiet, extremely fragile voice, all of it working to create a very subtle melody, woven into the already difficult and vivid depictions of self-destructive behavior within what one would believe to be love.

“Friendly Advice” sets a tone—not the entire tone for the songs that follow, but Green plays enough of her hand in how the song works from within what can be best described as a holding pattern—never at risk of shattering from just how fragile it all seems, and never moving out of this icy place of incredibly sad tension. And there are, as one might anticipate in an album that is as emotionally charged as Everything I Lack is, that there might be lyrical depictions that are difficult to hear—“Friendly Advice” is one of them. 

“I’m cold, I don’t wanna go home,” Green pleads quietly. “I wanna feel something—I don’t wanna feel so alone all the time.” Then, shortly after, perhaps lyrics that are even more self-deprecating: “I’ll be gone in the morning as if I weren’t there. You can wash me away like the smoke from your hair,” she assures. “When it circles the drain, I’ll do the same and be nothing.”

*

Again, and I do apologize, similar to Baker’s musical trajectory in terms of maturation and confidence between her mostly acoustic debut, Sprained Ankle, and its follow-up—still minimalistic but much lusher in what it did with that minimalism—Turn Out The Lights, you could make a similar case for the rather fast ascent of Green’s growth between her debut, Nothing to Anybody, and Everything I Lack. 

A majority of Everything I Lack finds Green exploring tone and texture on the electric guitar, using the piano only a few other times, and playing it similarly in her ability to let the chords ring out and hang just a little longer in the atmosphere, like on the slow, tumbling, and poignant “Consolation,” in the album’s second half, the stirring, theatrically arranged “Separate Beds, and in the album’s closing track, “Final Recap.”

Green returns to the acoustic guitar even less, with it being the main instrument on the intimately engineered “Second Try,” where you can intentionally hear her fingers sliding up and down on the strings before pressing them down into chords, and on the harrowing “Bottom Line,” tucked near the conclusion of the album.

In her use of the electric guitar, Green, in a number of places, favors a warm, thick-sounding tone—in the instrument’s early appearance on “Referee,” which was the first single released well in advance of the album even being announced, the sound is low, and a little warbled by effects, and as Everything, I Lack hits the halfway point, on “Goodness,” Green uses a very clean, and glistening tone. 

The warmer, more robust sound, though, found in “No Witnesses” and the sprawling “Boxer,” are where her dexterity with the instrument is most apparent, in how deliberately and delicately she strums and plucks—Green never shows off, nor does she need to with the kind of songs she is writing music for, and in that delicate nature, there is a surprising contrast of precision and hesitancy you can hear at times—a detail, albeit a small one, that ads to the hushed intimacy of the album as a whole.

In the music of Julien Baker, specifically between the expansion of her textures of the songs found on Turn Out The Lights, and the non-album singles that she released in 2019, the cathartic “Red Door” and “Tokyo,” you could hear her beginning to push back against the boundaries she had set within what instrumentation was, or was not, allowed, and began slowly embracing the inclusion of more and more layers—one of which was the subtle use of percussive elements, culminating in the eventual “full band” album Baker released near the beginning of 2021, Little Oblivions. 

Green, at this point in her career anyway, is perhaps not interested in filling the role of band leader, but does push back against her own boundaries in arranging in two moments on Everything I Lack that include a “full band,” with the results being as stirring and explosive as one might expect, given the nature of the record to begin with.

The first instance is within “Goodness,” the album’s fifth track—thundering percussion, a rumbling bass line, and an additional layer of guitar all come slamming down shortly after a minute into the song, disrupting the gentle, almost soothing nature “Goodness” begins with. It’s startling, yes, but that is the point, creating a moment of beautiful and near torrential catharsis—an exhale of sorts from the emotional health breath of the first half of the record. 

Everything I Lack’s penultimate moment, the six-minute and change “Boxer,” is the other place where Green tactfully includes a literal burst of additional instrumentation. Thematically, in the songs leading up to “Boxer,” she unpacks a lot of hurt, and a lot of anger—“Boxer,” though, finds Green writing from a rather contemplative place of remorse in the wake of the demise of a relationship. With the deliberately paced build-up toward the song’s ending, it is not as startling or surprising when Green gives the cue for the rest of the crisp, cacophonic instruments to arrive, but it is no less visceral to hear as they enter, briefly, with a little over a minute remaining in the song. 

*

The sadness, or palpable sense of sorrow, that courses throughout Everything I Lack is noticeable from its first listen—sadness, or sorrow, as one of the tones found in Green’s music as a whole was one of the elements that kept me interested after I first heard the song “Referee,” shortly after reading about her last fall.

The depths of the sadness, or at least the directions she takes the emotion, however, are what ultimately reveal themselves the more time you spend with the album, and the further you allow yourself to drift off into it, with many of the more harrowing, or poignant phrase turns arriving early on, but staying with you long after the album’s come to an end. 

“It’s a crime you get any sleep at night,” Green utters on the sparse, cavernous “Second Try.” “If I could write a song that would make you cry like I did, make you wish you could go back in time to the day we met and do everything right—on a second try that I won’t let you get this time,” she continues, alternating resentment and regret while the acoustic guitar and piano literally swirl around her. 

Later, on “Referee,” the tone becomes much more melancholic and self-effacing—“I’ve been a stranger in a costume of somebody at peace,” Green confesses. “Living my whole life like I’m a kid on Halloween.”

Baker, and, again, I apologize, has been very forthcoming in her songwriting about her religious upbringing and how that has impacted any kind of spiritual beliefs she has now as an adult, as well as her ongoing struggles with substance use and sobriety—and within those, there is often a violence that is unflinchingly depicted. I am uncertain what kind of relationship Green has with substances and sobriety, or with religion and spiritual beliefs, but they are themes that she finds a way to weave into her lyricism throughout Everything I Lack—when she does, it provides some of the album’s more arresting moments.

“I thought I was miserable because of the drink,” she sings later in “Referee.” “Then I let myself be miserable with full clarity and realized I was miserable because of me.”

Later, in the album’s second half, Green also includes rather graphic imagery in her writing, on “No Witnesses,” bending the depictions so that they blur the line between literal and figurative: “I wish that you would kick in my teeth,” she requests. “Tear out my eyes so that I can’t see when you walk away and leave me here trying to summon a prayer, make you reappear.”

Outside of flashes of violence, and allusions to spirituality, and a grappling with substances, there is, of course, the theme of heartbreak running throughout Everything I Lack—and in that heartbreak, there is the deprecation that Green is often writing from. Even the title of the album, as well as the title of her previous full-length, implies she believes herself to be the problem or that she is less than worthy of affection. 

And it is hard to hear, obviously, but it is in those unflattering depictions where one, regardless of how heartbroken they may or may not be feeling, can see equally unflattering reflections of themselves, or their least admirable qualities. 

“I wish I was a narcissist,” Green pleads on “Bottom Line.” “I wish I really couldn’t help it. I did it only out of spite—the worst you could think of me is too kind.

*

I was not as good at talking myself out of spending money when I was in my very early 20s as I am now, nearly two decades later. Had I been, perhaps I would have stood in the CD section of the Wal-Mart in Dubuque, Iowa, a little longer, certainly testing the patience of the friends I had come into the store with who, I am guessing, were probably waiting for me, and really given much more serious thought to purchasing Action Action’s debut full-length.

Money I did not need to spend, an album that ultimately did not warrant almost blindly purchasing on a whim.

It might not surprise you to learn that I have no idea what became of my copy of Don’t Cut Your Fabric to This Year’s Cloth—there is a high possibility that I got it back to my dorm room, played it once, maybe twice, and realized that I had made a mistake. 

That you can be a fan of The Killers, or of Interpol, or of Depeche Mode, but Action Action was nothing like those bands—nothing like those bands in terms of making compelling or inherently “good” music; they were like those bands in the sense that Action Action attempted to sound gloomy, at times, and used a lot of vintage, but out of place sounding, synthesizers. 

The “For Fans Of” sticker, at least in the case of artists that Victory Records was trying to market, was both well intended, and not. Well intended in the sense that it was a push to grab the attention of a potential listener—me, or you, perhaps, or of someone else wandering a big box store, browning at the CDs; and not, because in that push to grab the attention of a potential listener, it was riding the coattails of something much more popular or revered, with there being few, if truly any, similarities.

The idea of a “For Fans Of” means of comparison, or even “Recommended If You Like” are often dangerous—if not dangerous, which I admit is perhaps too dramatic of a word to use, these ideas, or notions, are at least the kind of thing to exercise caution with in terms of where you put your listening, or any kind of consuming, efforts. Sometimes it really does pay off, and you are able to discover an artist, or an album, or a new author or book—whatever, really—through this kind of means, but why I think it often does not work, or doesn’t quite land the way it is perhaps expected to, is through the direct comparison of one thing to the other.

In 2005, The Killers were less than a year removed from the release of their blistering debut, Hot Fuss, and Interpol had amassed a large audience through the slow-burning success of Turn On The Bright Lights and its follow-up, Antics—both bands were appealing, and probably overlapped in listenership, but because they were so successful and already beloved by audiences, using them as a point of reference in a comparison is, I think, what did a band like Action Action a disservice, simply because you, or at least I, went into Don’t Cut Your Fabric with sky-high expectations of something great, and what I got in return was really anything but that.

*

Among the things included in the cover art for Everything I Lack is an old motion picture camera, and a slice of film strip—and as the album closes, in the aptly titled “Final Recap,” the sound of an old projector whirring winds up playing a substantial role in the textures of the song. I can’t fault Green for trying, or going for it, but the use of the sound is a little distracting, and in the end, it, coupled with the few lyrics that use film, or motion picture, as a metaphor, ends up being a little heavy-handed.

Musically, as Green works through the song in piano chords that ring out, with a little less intentional silence and space in between them, there is something that is not “triumphant,” exactly, about the progressions she has arranged the song in, because this album, and these songs, are far from that kind of emotion, but there is something powerful and quite stirring about “Final Recap.” At times, in her writing, there is such a pleading and immediate sense of desperation, but here, there is almost a resignation—a kind of exhaustion in having to come to terms with this relationship’s dissolution. 

The album, if viewed as a difficult, or perhaps uncomfortable conversation with a close friend sitting across from you on the couch, is not really looking for advice, or for answers—Green, across Everything I Lack, needs to get these feelings out, but once the feelings are out, there is no real resolve other than understanding you have been heard. 

Over the last couple of years—the last four, specifically, I suppose, I have found reflections of myself—unflattering and otherwise—in unexpected places, which can be confusing or surprising to some. I am a man, pushing 40, who has been married for upwards of 14 years—so why, for example, would an album like Everything I Lack—written by a young woman, tracking the course of her heartbreak, resonate with me so much?

There are myriad emotions that can, and often are, universal in a sense—we, to the extent we are able, in muddling through the human condition, have known heartbreak, we have known loss and grief, we have known loneliness. 

We have known sadness.

We have known, or at least believed, we are lacking something.

We have all stood in the long shadow of a darkness that we are unable to escape from.

We all wrestle with something hideous inside of ourselves.

To what extent though—to what extent we know any of these, is our own. And in seeing perhaps difficult, unflattering, but familiar glimpses of ourselves in pop music, it can, maybe, make us feel seen, or attacked, or both—but if anything, it makes us feel a little less alone. 

Everything I Lack is an album that, as it ends, once you have spent time within it and the narrative that Green has crafted, opening herself up like this, gives us the opportunity to think about what we, perhaps, feel like we lack; to ponder how we see ourselves, and how we feel others might see us—for better or for worse.

There are two lines, specifically, that stuck with me after the film projector sound from “Final Recap” stopped, and the album came to an end: in “Friendly Advice,” Green asks, “Could you give me some friendly advice? How to live when it feels like I’m dying,” and just a few songs later on “Consolation,” perhaps one of the more sobering and resonant lyrics on the album: “Nobody’s gonna save me from me.”

I have found reflections of myself—often unflattering, and difficult to swallow—in unexpected places. 

How do you live when it feels like you are dying?

Nobody is going to save me from myself.

The work we put into ourselves is, as I continue to find, seemingly endless.

The notion of “For Fans Of,” or a “Recommended if you like,” can be both helpful, or made with good intentions, but is often dangerous, and if not dangerous, at least the kind of thing one should exercise caution with. Elliott Green, and Everything I Lack, is a rare and beautiful occasion where the direct comparisons that have been leaned into are successfully transcended, and she, as an up-and-coming singer and songwriter, and the album as an artistic statement, can stand on their own, and in doing so have crafted something absolutely stunning to experience.

^{1 - In researching Action Action, and trying to find an image of the hype sticker from the original packaging, I came across a promotional poster for sale on eBay that said, “Fans of early Depeche Mode—meet your new favorite band.”}

Everything I Lack is out now via Count Your Lucky Stars.