Two Philly bands
are on way to high notes

Music Row
By Brian Rademaekers

For the last three Tuesdays, Cheers Elephant has rocked out the Khyber in Old City, and this is a band quickly living up to its reputation as purveyors of enchanting psych-pop.
It’s undeniably good stuff. Good enough to sing along with. And while you may have missed the last three shows, their upcoming Tuesday night gig — the last in the January series — promises to be one of the best.
For one thing, these guys, who hail from what we’ll call the Greater Philly area, love a good live show and are well-known for an animated stage presence.
Seeing that it’s their last show in the residency, chances are they’ve been saving some of their best tricks for last.
Their pairing for the night with Bucks County’s Drink Up Buttercup also is a perfect one that has great potential. Both bands fall into a vein of music that has emerged from the Philly scene of late where the dreamy, hazy fuzz of late 1960s psychedelic pop rock is being delightfully revisited.
Think of albums like the Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request, the Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society and the Beatles’ Rubber Soul.
Now think about that music played through the filter of twentysomething rock star aspirants born sometime in the 1980s.
The result is a cool and rocking revision of the sounds and spirit ushered in by the British Invasion, and it is wonderfully captured in the music of Cheers Elephant and Drink Up Buttercup.
Cheers Elephant is a four-piece of young guys who have been playing together since high school, but the band has yet to release an "official" album. The closest thing so far is Here We Are, a CD-R release containing 11 excellent tracks, the precursor to a bona fide release likely to come out this spring.
That said, just where their sound will land on the debut album is still up the air. But on Here We Are, the sounds are an inspiring blend of nostalgic throwbacks dripping with melody and more modern indie-rock influenced pieces.
Take two songs, Space and Time and Mr. Marvelous. The first is a pretty straightforward indie-rock anthem with hammering bass lines that hint at Franz Ferdinand, though there are hints of ’70s rock pomp and psychedelia.
In Mr. Marvelous, playful mind tricks and an airy chorus sprawled amid a jangling cacophony take listeners further back and draw in bits of Magical Mystery Tour and the Byrds.
The beauty of their music is that, for all the mish-mashing of genres and eras, the songs make for fun listening. There is, somehow, a pleasant simplicity that seems culled from a sheer joy the band members get out of listening to and playing music.
Their cohorts for next Tuesday are not far off the mark in this regard either.
Like Cheers Elephant, it is hard not to have a good time while listening to the music of Drink Up Buttercup.
They don’t quite have an album together either, and they are even younger than their friends in Cheers.
Drink Up Buttercup takes the Brit influence to another level, and if you didn’t know better, you might even be fooled into thinking these chaps serve the Queen.
Their live act also is something worth catching — furious piano-key banging accented by crashing beats on metal trashcans and smoking guitar riffs.
Both these bands are really just starting to come into their own, and watching them grow over the next year as their much-anticipated albums hit the shelves is going be a good time guaranteed for all. ••

Check it out . . .

Who: Cheers Elephant and Drink Up Buttercup
What: The final throes in a rollicking residency with two up-and-coming Philly greats.
Where: The Khyber, 2nd and Chestnut streets in Old City.
When: Tuesday, Jan 29. Doors open at 8 p.m.; tickets are $8.