Joseph O’Connell, the man who records as Elephant Micah, works as a folklorist, collecting the traditional tunes of Southern Indiana and the greater Midwest. The melodies he writes suggest the flat, wide-open spaces of the American heartland with cryptic lyrics that are full of images suggesting a man walking into an endless tunnel looking for a glimmer of light. “Demise of the Bible Birds” is a melancholy waltz that matches O’Connell’s forlorn tenor with biblical images to address the quandaries of the unknowable future. A bass drum adds a funeral tone to “By The Canal,” a quiet meditation on the struggle
between Christianity and paganism, while “Albino Animals” is a list of life’s ordinary disasters, with O’Connell’s detached vocals adding to the song’s hopeless ambience.