Stream: Elle Belle, ‘Gone Are the Days’

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Elle Belle (Photo by Casey Curry)

“I wanna have fun / but we’re always at war,” Christopher Pappas sings with a touch of resignation on the new Elle Belle song, “Gone Are the Days.”

It’s the first single on Elle Belle’s fourth album, “How Do I Feel?,” out Sept. 1 via Little Record Company, the label helmed by Rilo Kiley’s Pierre de Reeder.

De Reeder co-produced and engineered the album at his 64 Sound studio in Highland Park, and he’s a co-writer on “Gone Are the Days,” which finds Pappas casting around in his usual underdog bummerdom to find hope and humor. Perhaps weirdly, it sounds like the National as an ’80s pop band.

Says Pappas: “The song is about the world we inherited from our parents and how we were set up to fail. It’s about disillusionment, war and getting older.”

Pappas (formerly of Everyday Visuals and Miracle Parade) launched Elle Belle in earnest with the sprawling album “Wako Gumbo” in 2016 and has released full-lengths in even-numbered years ever since. He says, though, that “How Do I Feel?” might be his final full-length.

“By making this record,” he says, “what I did was I readjusted the real questions I should be asking myself. It doesn’t matter how I feel. What you need to remember is that people go through shit, but you can do this. That became the main takeaway. How do I feel? Fuck if I know. But you know what? I’m going to wake up tomorrow. And there’s power in just being like, no matter what you get up, you make the bed, go get your coffee and you keep going.”

||| Stream: “Gone Are the Days”

||| Live: Elle Belle plays Aug. 30 at the Hotel Café along with Ha Ha Tonka. Tickets.

||| Previously: “Red Light Blues,” “Everyone Knows (But They Won’t Tell You),” “No Signal,” “Straight As an Arrow,” “Knock on the Light,” “Failed Dreamz,” “You Better Mean It”