Elliot Minor - Parallel Worlds

February 17, 2013 Critic Jonni 0 Comments

Elliot Minor becomes my Sunday Revisit, purely because I don't think I'll have a chance to review this band again since they may never stop their hiatus. So instead, I hope The Dead Famous or Spirits will be reviewed on this blog soon, as one member from each of those bands were in Elliot Minor. The band consisted of Alex Davies, Ed Minton, Ed Hetherton, Dan Hetherton and Ali Paul. Dan is now in The Dead Famous and Alex is in Spirits. The other three are studying in various different places.

I chose this song as I thought it would only be fair to review their first single, as I reviewed their most recent "I Believe" on Friday. "Parallel Worlds" was written by Alex Davies and Ed Minton and is about supernatural ghosts in a room, as when they were at school an attic flat was believed to have been haunted according to Alex. This song got to number 31 in it's original release, but a year later it got re-released, scoring the band's 3rd best charting single at 21, following "Still Figuring Out" which got to 17 and "Jessica" which got to 19. The UK chart was being dominated by rock bands, but now there is no successful charting positions for them, hence why teenage memories of famous bands is just a past-time (for the moment, I have a feeling the rock age will swing around again at some point).

This is not the original music video since I have been struggling to find the original. I'm sure if I was pushed I'd eventually find it, but for now we have the re-released version, which is a lot better nonetheless.

There is both a narrative and a performance, but surprisingly it's all rolled into one. The band are ghosts and so are their instruments (funnily enough), but they can still manipulate real-life objects, scaring the people eating at the dinner time, if only they knew how lucky they were to have Elliot Minor performing in front of them.

On paper this sounds amazing, in the music video... It's just as good, it's engaging, clever and different to other videos, therefore making it stand out. The only critique I have is that I think the editing has made the scenes short and quick, I had to watch it twice to see if I missed anything the first time round as it's speedy and you don't realise what is happening until too far in, and then it all clicks.

Overall a catchy song that deserves that 21 charting position, however nowadays it would have no chance. The music video is hauntingly creepy and shocking, I can't help but laugh at the wine glass, definitely my favourite scene. Apart from the speedy cuts of the camera shots, I have nothing else negative to say, and I'm willing to let the camera cuts slide, so here's a very deserving rating.