True midwestern reality, The Elms maintain, is stark and heavy. "I go to the local hangs and play cards," Owen Thomas says, "with guys who are 50 or 60 years old. What I hear most people say is that given the chance, they would have gotten out of this town. And I'm not pointing these things out to say that this is a horrible, deadbeat, mundane, burnout little place. What I'm trying to say is that there are millions of American people who, by and large, are victims of circumstance. Many in America are doing what they do because somebody told them that following their heart was not practical."

The scrappiest confidence surges through Thomas' talk, the same kind of blunt yet nuanced authority that animates 'The Chess Hotel', The Elms' debut LP for Universal South Records. The Elms are fiercely devoted friends, twenty-somethings with a deep-seated commitment to one another.

"My brother Christopher plays drums," he says. "Thom Daugherty, my best friend since grade school, plays guitar. And I've known Nathan Bennett, our bassist, for eight years. All of these elements need to be in existence for The Elms to make sense to me. If one of us wanted to leave, I'd have a hard time believing that it would carry on. We would never let this become a faceless thing. There aren't replaceable members in The Elms."

'The Chess Hotel' is a literal, wound-up, highly emotional collection. It presents thirteen songs about the actualities of life and love in a small town. The songs sound, according to Thomas, alternately "loose," "noisy," "catty," "riffy," and, not least, "loud." For The Elms' purposes here, he argues that hi-fi studio creations would have been dead wrong. It would have been counter to logic. And that is something that Owen Thomas doesn't like.

"Listen to songs like "The Chess Hotel," about blue-collar burnout, or songs like "Makes Good Sense" or "The Towers & The Trains." For those songs to come at you from 50 sonic angles makes no sense. We wanted people to feel the raw sentiments of our town, and the raw sentiments of real life for the bulk of Americans. The sound needed to come right up the middle of the speakers at your nose -- because if I were pleading the case for my friends, I'd be right in your face about it."