Elephant Stone, is the Montreal trio led by singer/bassist/songwriter/sitar player, Rishi Dhir. Ship of Fools is the band’s fourth full-length LP. The band also includes, Miles Dupire (drummer/backing vox) and Gabriel Lambert (geetar/backing vox).

The creation of the eleven tracks, as Dhir says, allowed him to embrace his true identity as “pop songwriter” whose tunes are custom built for the dance floor. Add the talents of producer Marcus Paquin (Arcade Fire/The National) to the works, and the result is an album chock full of stylistically diverse cuts that could all stand on their own as hit singles.

Dhir formed the band in 2009 and released their debut The Seven Seas that same year. The selftitled 2nd album Elephant Stone followed in 2013 and in 2014 they released The Three Poisons.

“Around Jan 2015, NASA released images of the Andromeda galaxy taken by the Hubble telescope. I was deep in the writing for Ship of Fools and was scouring the net for inspiration. I came upon an article in a Science magazine describing what can be seen from the photograph…. there were lines describing the stars as “grains of sand from a wizard’s hand” (or something like that). Anyhow, I found the article very poetic and inspiring. Pair this with the fact that my musical obsession at the time was Air’s soundtrack for the color reissue of “Le voyage dans la lune” and I was working with the imagery of Bosch’s “Ship of Fools”. So, there’s a lot in this song that may not be so obvious. The icing on the cake, though, was that NASA had also just released via Soundcloud a library of audio recordings (copyright free!!!). So, I downloaded some of the tracks and added them to the outro. It’s all very pop art.”

Elephant Stone tour dates:
10/16 – Small’s – Detroit, MI
10/17 – Schubas – Chicago, IL
10/18 – Big Room Bar – Columbus, OH
10/19 – MOTR Pub (Free show) – Cincinnati, OH
10/20 – Howler’s – Pittsburgh, PA
10/21 – Kung-Fu Necktie – Philadelphia, PA
10/22 – Trans Pecos – Brooklyn, NY
11/3 – Satellite – Los Angeles, CA
11/4 – Milk Bar – San Francisco, CA
11/7 – Bunk Bar – Portland, OR
11/8 – Cobalt – Vancouver, BC
11/10 – The Aviary – Edmonton, AB
11/11 – Palomino – Calgary, AB
11/13 – Lo-Fi – Seattle, WA
11/16 – Continental Room (Free show) – Fullerton, CA