Take It!

Charming and sometimes charged with a surprisingly sprightly bite thanks to touches like near-surf rock guitar lines on songs like "The Organ Grinder" and the rushed and increasingly chaotic conclusion of "Turtle Struggles," the Elephants' second album, Take It, is on balance a slight pleasure but a pleasure nonetheless, another example of a Scandinavian indie pop/rock group — in this case from Denmark — being merrily addicted to tuneful songs. The sense of underlying melancholy found in many similar bands recurs here as well, though often more musically than otherwise — the isolation of bandleader Bjarke Bendtsen's voice on the title track, with a palpable sense of space between him and the band heightened by a false ending into echo (and then a real ending abruptly cut off), and the ominous guitar ending to "Eva" are two instances among many. But it's an effective contrast to what might otherwise be simply cheery songs, even if it is as simple as the steady, almost dirgelike drums underneath the beautiful guitar twang of "Molehills."