The Olivia Tremor Control

I’d hardly have had an inkling that 2026 would bring, of all things, a fabled third and final Olivia Tremor Control record. The long revered band, and The Elephant 6 in general, are one of the pillars that brought RSTB into fruition many years ago. It seems like an intangible dream that the band has posthumously delivered another pop-up book of artfully tailored psych-pop. The record’s origins are tangled up in decades of sessions (both solo and collaborative) grief, loss, and the recovery of a solitary hard drive containing the bulk of the album that was almost lost forever. The sessions here have been amassed as far back as the late ’90s, though most would twine around sessions for The Circulatory System and The Sunshine fix, coming in from Bill Doss and Will Cullen Hart to their stable of collaborators as something that fit neither of those outlets. They were songs that just seemed destined to be among the castles and curios of The Olivia Tremor Control.

Following the loss of Bill Doss in 2012, the hard drive that contained most of the album went into storage, and it would take more than a decade before it would be back in hand. With fingers crossed, it still fired up, containing a bounty of work that had been etched over time. A pair of tracks was released as part of The E6 documentary, giving light to some of what was lurking on the drive. Yet, just as those seeped out into the world, Hart’s passing put a grey cloud over the news of new music. The final assembly of the third album would eventually fall to multi-instrumentalists Derek Almstead and Jason NeSmith, who’d been working with Bill and Will on the album over the years. The resulting album feels completely comfortable in the legacy of OTC, a sprawling (could it be any other way) lysergic album, perfumed with pop while winding through the kind of surrealist wilds the band’s long been known for.

The record comes complete with a longform sojourn that spans a side length of the set. “Path of the Parallels” takes on the “Green Typewriters” territory for this record, not diving quite as deep into the subconscious caverns as “Black Foliage.” The band still slips into the edges, though. Weaving a familiar tapestry the band pushes furthest from the pop center on this passage, feeling through the fog with an eerie aura, casting strange lights along the windows and walls. They emerge from the Path and back into dewy pop territory book-ending the suite with candy-colored gems that have just the right sense of familiarity. In his notes on the album, NeSmith remarked that the original plan had been to end the band with the single prepared for Robert Schneider’s documentary, but that ultimately it didn’t sit right. He noted that Olivia Tremor Control is a double-album band, and in that regard, he’s absolutely right. What’s remarkable is how decades can be woven into wonder so seamlessly. For a record assembled in fits and starts, The Same Place is remarkably cohesive, a testament not only to Doss and Hart’s fingerprints on the songwriting, but to Almstead and NeSmith’s reverence for OTC’s legacy and lineage. Again, I never thought I’d see third record from Olivia Tremor Control, but it’s wonderful to sink back into the velvet crush of their atmospheres one last time.

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