''Élan Vital'' is the third and final studio album by

Pretty Girls Make Graves Pretty Girls Make Graves was a post-punk band formed in Seattle in 2001, named after The Smiths' song of the same name (which itself was named after a quote from Jack Kerouac's ''The Dharma Bums''). Andrea Zollo and Derek Fudesco had played t ...

, released by

Matador Records Matador Records is an independent record label, with a roster of mainly indie rock, but also punk rock, experimental rock, alternative rock, and electronic acts. History Matador was created in 1989 by Chris Lombardi in his New York City apart ...

on March 4, 2006 in Australia and April 11, 2006 in the US. It is the first album with new keyboardist Leona Marrs. The title is based on the philosophical idea,

élan vital ''Élan vital'' () is a term coined by French philosopher Henri Bergson in his 1907 book '' Creative Evolution'', in which he addresses the question of self-organisation and spontaneous morphogenesis of things in an increasingly complex manner ...

Track listing

#"The Nocturnal House" – 4:04 #"Pyrite Pedestal" – 3:26 #"The Number" – 3:09 #"Parade" – 2:40 #"Domino" – 3:38 #"Interlude" – 1:18 #"The Magic Hour" – 3:16 #"Selling the Wind" – 3:54 #"Pearls on a Plate" – 3:46 #"Pictures of a Night Scene" – 2:52 #"Wildcat" – 3:11 #"Bullet Charm" – 6:43

Personnel

*Andrea Zollo –

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

*Nick Dewitt –

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

, samples, vocals,

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

*Derek Fudesco –

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

, vocals *

J. Clark Jason Crowe Clark is an American musician from Minneapolis, Minnesota who became well known after moving to Seattle, Washington.Cook, Cameron (2003), 'SUP magazine, July 8, 2003 He has played guitar in Pretty Girls Make Graves, and Killsadie, as w ...

–

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

, drums,

keyboard Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to pr ...

, trumpet, vocals, programming *Leona Marrs – keyboards,

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

, piano,

melodica The melodica is a handheld free-reed instrument similar to a pump organ or harmonica. It features a musical keyboard on top, and is played by blowing air through a mouthpiece that fits into a hole in the side of the instrument. The keyboard usual ...

, vocals {{DEFAULTSORT:Elan Vital Pretty Girls Make Graves albums 2006 albums Matador Records albums