Nine characters. Six rooms. One interdimensional hotel. With Elevator Songs, the first collaboration between multi-Grammy-winning vocal group Roomful of Teeth and singer-songwriter/composer Gabriel Kahane, the laws of time and space give way to pure feeling. 

 

Scored for the eight voices of Roomful of Teeth plus Kahane on keyboards and guitar, the album draws additional colour from two members of the vocal ensemble - Eliza Bagg on violin alongside Jodie Landau on vibraphone. The group tracked the album in a whirlwind four days at the end of 2024 with the help of three-time Grammy-nominated engineer/producer Joseph Lorge. 

 

The resulting album runs the emotional gamut from the ridiculous (“Valise,” “Hot Tub”) to the wrenching (“Not Even the Dead,” “Memory Burns”) and everything in between.

 

With each song - one for each member of Roomful of Teeth and bookended by a pair of tunes sung by Kahane, who wrote and arranged the entire work - a distinct world emerges in a succession of series of hotel rooms.