After 2 CDs, an EP and a DVD for powerhouse Christian label Sparrow Records, The Elms are back, after making the switch to Universal South Records.

Scrappy confidence surges through lead singer Owen Thomas’ talk and that same kind of blunt yet nuanced authority animates The Chess Hotel, The Elms’ debut LP for Universal South Records. The Elms are fiercely devoted friends, twenty-somethings with a deep-seated commitment to one another.

The Chess Hotel is a literal, wound-up, highly emotional collection. It presents thirteen songs about the actualities of life and love in a small town. The songs sound, according to Thomas, alternately “loose,” “noisy,” “catty,” “riffy,” and, not least, “loud.” For The Elms’ purposes here, he argues that hi-fi studio creations would have been dead wrong. It would have been counter to logic. And that is something that Owen Thomas doesn’t like.

“Listen to songs like The Chess Hotel,” about blue-collar burnout, or songs like Makes Good Sense or The Towers & The Trains. For those songs to come at you from 50 sonic angles makes no sense. We wanted people to feel the raw sentiments of our town, and the raw sentiments of real life for the bulk of Americans. The sound needed to come right up the middle of the speakers—because if I were pleading the case for my friends, I’d be right in your face about it.”

The songs on The Chess Hotel use robust rock and roll to plead that case; the music is sonically rooted in the band’s admiration for the work of ‘60s and ‘70s titans such as the Kinks and the Who. The Elms never succumb to classic-rock replicas, though. They get in your face bringing their cause. Yet the band’s longing is intense for a connected sense of what feels like logic.

You can pick up a copy of The Elms’ The Chess Hotel on Tuesday, May 2nd at a Canadian Christian retailer near you. Audio samples from the rockin’ Chess Hotel can be found on The Elms’ YMZ artist page.