It’s is a little after midnight on Friday, August 20. The Bears of Blue River, followed by Canasta – both extremely talented Chicago bands – just finish a pair of inspired sets at Lincoln Avenue’s finest cheese-and-noodle-serving musical establishment, Lincoln Hall.

Now, with four horn-playing musicians crammed onto stage left and four additional violin-clad musicians in reserve, things are about to get serious. Two guys with music composition degrees from Eastern Illinois University and two other rhythmically-inclined gentlemen who comprise the Champaign-Urbana-based headliner, Elsinore, position themselves on stage to celebrate the release of their new record Yes, Yes, Yes. Three powerful songs into the set , Ryan Groff, the band’s front man, lays down a most unlikely and awesome line to a crowd of about 350:

“We love you guys like the Beastie Boys loved their fans in the 90s.”

So what does Elsinore sound like? Given the legion of orchestral units, led by four musical junkies who pride themselves on knowing how to arrange for them, you definitely get back the ten bucks you doled out for the release show. For starters, Groff says the band’s arrangements and style are consciously influenced by Radiohead, Grizzly Bear, Death Cab for Cutie, and – at least for their new album — Elliot Smith. The group pulls off a slight Brit-pop vibe at times – with Groff’s voice resembling a mature James Walsh of Starsailor and the instrumentation can sometimes hint at a cross between Muse and Doves. But there is a heavily-rooted mastery of arrangement also, and a well-developed orchestral backdrop that you might expect would come from two high-brow music composition majors like Groff and the band’s co-creator, Mark Woolwine.

The orchestral arrangements are a natural extension of Groff and Woolwine’s music education. “Mark and I both have composition degrees,so we decided it was finally time to use them,” Groff said of the new record. “When we were in the studio, the strings parts … finally came together.”

The strings are added value, something that drummer, Dave Pride, jokingly calls “the icing on the cake,” and the process of arranging is a highly collaborative one; as Woolwine says: “How I see it is that we’re all together writing something that we all like to play every single day. And if we can’t get to that point, the song has to go.”

This also illustrates how it might be a cop-out to say Elsinore has any one or any two musical masterminds. You don’t get such tight rhythms, rich dynamics and melodic orchestrations without everyone pulling their fair share of the weight: Ryan Groff on guitar and vocals; Mark Woolwine on keys; Dave Pride on drums and percussion; and Chris Eitel on bass.

The band first united as one unit in October, 2004 in Charleston, Illinois, the small town south of Chicago that is home to both Eastern Illinois University and an intimate little music scene where Elsinore first sharpened their chops in the two major music bars: the Uptowner and Friends & Company. Chris Eitel had been working at Uptowner and was a local musician, playing guitar in a few bands before deciding to join Elsinore because of their early melodic prowess.

“I’m a sucker for the melodies,” he admitted.

Eitel proceeded to learn bass so he could fulfill a much-needed niche within Elsinore at the time, and by default becoming a musical utility man alongside percussionist Dave Pride. Eitel’s bass at times can sound as percussive as Chris Squire of the archetypal prog-rock group, Yes, which must be a unique result of switching from guitar.

As far as front men go, they may say a lot of things about Ryan Groff in 30 years. That he is a visionary; that he is a great songwriter and arranger; that Elsinore made it to the top against all odds — and any variation or opposing statement therein.

But one thing they won’t be able to deny, despite whatever the future holds for Elsinore, is that Groff is a class act.

He’s the kind of guy who, standing on stage during the performance, so politely asks the sound engineer for more violins in the monitor mix that you also find yourself wanting a little bit more violin in the monitor mix, just to root him on – like, hell yeah; take that, sound guy!

He’s the kind of guy who, during a pre-show interview, pulls a chair over for the music journalist before sitting down himself – where many bands, caught up with preconceptions of what the pageant should look like, might wrestle for seats first just to ensure the proper appearance of badassery.

Groff seems comfortable in almost any situation, commanding a room with nearly waist-length curly brown locks bold, tiger-striped glasses, one of the largest stainless steel wrist watches you’ll ever see and a generally enthusiastic demeanor. On stage, he carries himself more like a communication-savvy event organizer than a rock star, introducing almost every song by name so the audience can follow along, and using formal, esoteric short hand to explain cast changes – like, calling it ‘The String Quartet’ instead of “A String Quartet” or “Our String Quartet” or even calling the musicians by name (Think about it. There’s a slight difference, as if by using “the” Groff is letting the audience in on an exciting band secret).

But this organized quality manifests itself in the tight, well-arranged music that Elsinore writes and performs. Musically, the stuff is solid and sophisticated both instrumentally and melodically. While songs aren’t structured that much differently than traditional pop or rock, you can almost imagine all the musical nerdiness that must have gone into creating such a cohesive and complex sound – and that is said with all due respect, of course.

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As a unrelated, yet totally interesting side note: After recording the album and releasing it on the Urbana-based indie label, Parasol Records, Elsinore ran into a minor copyright scare over the album cover artwork. Brittany Pyle, photographer and video artist who is more or less the band’s fifth artistic member, created her own appropriation of the famous Roy Lichtenstein piece, “Kiss V,” which caused a stir in the artistic community. Lichtenstein’s foundation complained about it to the band.

“Four or five days later,” Groff said, “hundreds of emails and thousands of website hits and comments later, they repealed that comment and said, ‘OK, we realize [Pyle] did exactly what Lichtenstein did, so we’re okay with it.”

Crisis averted.
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Overall, Elsinore’s musical camaraderie is evident, especially on stage with the full weight of classical instruments behind them. Lincoln Hall served as the band’s third show on the album tour and, despite a few jitters here and there, they executed song after song after song. “Chemicals,” by far one of the strongest tracks on the album, was also one of the strongest of the set. And the title track, accompanied brilliantly by the horn section, was also a stand out.

They plan to make at least two or three visits to Chicago in the next few years because they enjoy the venues and the crowds. The band is starting to get some press on the national stage, with spins on dozens of radio stations and attention from blogs and other print media that Elsinore is only now realizing existed.

Elsinore -- “Chemicals”