The story of Colorado band Elway is subtle—After making headlines in 2011, when namesake football great John Elway requested they change their name, the band have lived under the radar, making sturdy emo-punk records and building a dedicated fan-base.
According to front man Tim Browne, there’s nothing that differentiates Colorado’s punk scene and sound at this point in time from the rest of the country. However, more than one song on the new album, The Best of All Possible Worlds, includes multiple lines about looking West and starting anew. The song “Deep Fake” even includes a bridge of Hi-Ho-Silver whistles and a deep tom-tom, immediately transporting the listener to the time of saloon shoot-outs and blowing tumbleweeds … or, just 30 minutes north on Hwy 287 out of Denver.
For the new album, the band found themselves stuck, like all of us, in the 2020-2021 reality. This was made more difficult by different members living and working outside of Colorado. After Browne put together a few demos, the band made the hard decision to meet in person the summer of 2020, at the height of the pandemic, to work out the songs. To put it simply, Browne said the choice was “gnarly.” The space and time to due to COVID constraints did prove useful, forcing Elway to take more time and work within the confines of cross-country collaboration. The end result is the band’s most comprehensive album to date. The Best of All Possible Worlds was recorded in Denver in 2021 by Wyoming native Collin Ingram at The Band Cave Studios in Denver.
While Elway didn’t set out to make a concept album, Browne feels this happened inevitably. Browne’s favorite song on the album is “Maximum Entropy,” and it serves as a constant current of disorder through the other tracks. “The song itself is about the statistical unlikelihood that you’ll ever get to experience any given moment before the death of the universe … it’s a double-edged sword. This (moment) will never happen again, and it’s tragic, but it’s so incredibly singular and precious that it happened at all. That it is special.”
For the song’s video, the band chose to tell the heart-wrenching story of Laika, the first dog in space. In true Mystery Science Theater 3000 fashion, the story is both one of human control, arrogance, and hope. “Maximum Entropy” captures Laika’s spirit. “She was forced to do something that she probably had absolutely no understanding of whatsoever and then died for the pleasure as well,” Browne says. “But that is, in a way, incredible beyond her own ability to comprehend that she was the first dog to ever leave the planet.”
It’s a heavy feeling to contemplate and work through. But that’s why we have Elway to do the hard work and pilot us through the turbulence of nothingness, in search of something “singular and precious.”
Watch the video for “Maximum Entropy” here:
For more from Elway, find them on Facebook, Twitter, and Bandcamp.
Photo courtesy of Tom May
