These characters frequently seek transcendence, whether through romance (the tender acoustic ballad “Away You Stride”) or music itself (“Little Left Hope” includes a proposal to start a band). If they don’t feel doomed from the start, they give up altogether: On “Pale Song,” the narrator believes their life could be written on “stone with a little chalk,” and they can’t bring themselves to go out and actually live it. “Jaundice” depicts people “born without any face” and “without any roots.” Then again, it’s also an Irish jig performed with the energy of Ellis’ Windmill compatriots like Black Country, New Road, particularly with Matthew Deakin’s tom-heavy shuffle. It plays like a celebration of anonymity.
The moments of direct storytelling feel more tantalizing considering how little we know about the writer. “Feathers, Cash” and “When You Tie Your Hair Up” are straightforward breakup songs with lovingly intimate imagery; on the former, he describes drawing dogs with the steam in a shower, and on the latter, he notices stress manifesting in his own hands: “The skin creased in our palms cuts deeper each night,” he sings. After the best of the album’s crescendos, Ellis strips everything away again, pining for a character named Annie. On “Cash,” he characterizes love with surreal irreverence, and it sounds more like an incantation, calling a partner “my one polished orb,” followed by three handclaps.
There are plenty of very good Jeff Buckley-inspired indie songwriters across the pond, like Belgian-Egyptian songwriter Tamino and Scottish musician Jacob Alon. Dove Ellis stands out among them by finding the right balance between the weirdness of his Windmill peers and a more classicist style of songwriting. It allows him to make a near-perfect pop song, “Love Is,” also the most intricate song on the record. The arrangement is so dense it might take multiple listens to know when the multitracked Ellises swap from “love is” to “love is not,” and it will certainly take more to notice the drum hits that coincide with that switch. Even the chorus sounds more liberating than it does on the page: “Love is not the antidote to all your problems,” he sings, fitting for an album where devotion causes more damage than it heals. Even at his most accessible, Ellis still keeps his distance.
