“AURAL ELIXIR - a tonic for the heart. Jesse Maclaine, her piano, and sympathetic musical backing is what makes Aural Elixir a strong offering. "ONE" starts the set and it's a good song. The piano runs, the little twinkling keys. Lyrics that sound great when sung. These aren't typical singer songwriter lyrics but they are affecting poetry and full of imagery - well put together. Her voice dominates " BLURRY " above and beyond her already impressive piano work. A wonderful song, the type of song that's likely to send a chill right up your spine. Over all the music is stripped down, and primitive but within a slightly more accessible song structure."Joint Effort" is a fun song, like the rest of the tunes: repeat playable, certainly. MB 4/2/2007”

"About the band’s name, blame it on the original Mother of Invention: “Frank Zappa is one of my heroes & he made a movie called 200 Motels. There’s a running joke in it about elixirs—how you get this fabulous elixir, good for everything, put it on your car, on your toothbrush, clean your clothes with it. I had that idea musically & I knew I wanted it to be some type of elixir. I like the concept of having an elixir, which is healing and usually liquid, combined with the word aural, which means for your ears.” When musicians record music, their hope is that listeners will be awed by their compositions’ melodies and riffs, blown away by the lead guitarist’s deconstruction of Django Reinhardt, left speechless by the surreptitious sampling of the Soft Machine, enraptured by the contrapuntal references to Timi Yuro. Take the case of Aural Elixir & its' Love & Grappling album, recorded at RCA Studio B in Nashville, where Elvis recorded Blue Christmas..."excerpt from the article

"This is music from a big kitchen. Aural Elixir's low-key, jazzy folk recalls the Roches attention to vocal textures, speaking half a line then completing it melodically, then fluttering the next thought. ..like sharing jokes and stories on a Thursday night while making dinner and getting drunk on red wine."

“These artistic auteurs paint musical pictures both delightfully impressionistic and happily expressionistic ”