(Octoverse Media, CD, digital, vinyl)
Gabriel Kahane has proven he can arrange his music to suit just about any subject, whether it’s as mundane as Craigslist for-sale ads or as thrilling as a life-altering cross-country train ride. With Elevator Songs, the singer-songwriter and composer has teamed up with the Grammy-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth for a project that brings a grand vision to life and leverages his abilities to showcase the impressive talents of nine different singers.
Kahane sets a mesmeric scene with this latest recording. It’s staged in an imagined hotel where, naturally, an elevator serves as a conduit, moving from floor to floor and introducing peculiar characters. The room numbers and hotel departments are used as the titles of the album’s 11 transportive pieces.
At each stop, idiosyncratic performances portray disparate lives, set in different times and places but all perceived from the same bizarre establishment. More notably, each track spotlights a different member of Roomful of Teeth, giving each a chance to wield their distinctive sound. Kahane’s fascinating compositions seem unrelated when heard separately, but the common thread is unquestionably the harmonies of Roomful of Teeth.
On “Newborn Plague (Room 304),” Virginia Warnken Kelsey portrays one-half of a couple cruising along a snowy Utah highway devoid of humans in the wake of an epidemic. As these fictitious partners continue their journey, a swell of violin, synthesizer and vibraphone lifts the lead vocalist as she uses her stunning mezzo-soprano to ask, “Are we the last living lovers on the Earth?”
Flirtatious and with an addictive pop chorus, “Valise (Room 1832)” drops in at a DoubleTree in Texas, where a fashion podcaster gives advice to the sex-minded traveler. In one of the album’s surprises, Jodie Landau — also the album’s vibraphonist — provides risqué guidance, instructing his listeners to “start with a sexy pair of underwear.” The seductive vibe gives way to a catchy if self-righteous refrain: “Put it in my valise / Only flying first class / Burst past all the other riffraff.”
The figurative elevator ride includes memorable stops at the lobby, the machine room and a fitness center, where Thann Scoggin’s bass-baritone gives operatic voice to a man soaking in a filthy hot tub while Estelí Gomez plays an overzealous, agitated and drunken fellow guest.
Elevator Songs premiered in late 2023 as a performance at Seattle’s Meany Center for the Performing Arts — one of the project’s commissioners. In its recorded form, Elevator Songs hears Roomful of Teeth’s mix of voice styles join in ecstatic support of each track’s lead singer. The group, formed in 2009, is widely acclaimed for its adaptability and the kind of grand harmonies that are heard throughout this album.
Kahane’s a gifted singer himself, and it’s his voice that introduces the hotel on the record’s prologue. On the closing track, “All That Is Solid (The Elevator),” he personifies the hotel’s lift, extracting the perspective that a machine like this could gain through years of use: “Traveling floor to floor to floor to floor to floor to floor / Witnessing birth, death, fistfights, suicide, heartbreak, revelation.”
Though Kahane’s own final lyrics create a lasting impression, Elevator Songs achieves what he’d intended: It’s a resounding celebration of his Roomful of Teeth collaborators.
Roomful of Teeth and Kahane perform Elevator Songs this Friday, April 17, at the University of Vermont Recital Hall in Burlington as part of the Lane Series. Elevator Songs is available at gabrielkahane.bandcamp.com.
This article appears in April 15 • 2026.
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