Hailing from Charlottetown on Prince Edward Isand, Canada, Ellsworth, along with Adam Gallant, recorded his new album over the course of two years, starting as an experiment using lo-fi iPhone demos to build a hi-fi track on, Gallant adding drums and bass and Ellsworth the guitars, keys and vocals.
Narrowed down to 10 tracks soaked in a fuzzy pop groove, it kicks off with a clattering of drums on the steady loping ‘Summer Gloss’ with its overlapping whispery vocals and swirls of synths and keys, a forever love song “even if we fall apart”.
Matters of the heart dominate the album, next being the drum-led rhythm of the chugging summery pop ‘I Can’t Think’ (“I can’t think when I’m feeling this way/Ooh hoo, I’m tripping over you/I might as well be walking on the moon”) punctuated by some quirky voice and background effects.
A similar shuffling musical framework carries the autobiographical ‘Sundried Daisies’ which, joined by Emilea May on vocals and sporting a Brain Wilson haze, is a reverie of a summer of, well, love affording positive vibes when times are less so (“The price of fuel is hanging out/Somewhere near a breaking point/Seeds of love and seeds of doubt/Are scattered all around”) as he sings “right now, none of that matters/Put your worries away”. The whole album is washed with such feelings of memories of good times and seizing the moment, captured again the choppy 60s soul chug and George Clinton colours of ‘Every Second Every Day’ (“People always talking like they’re running out of time/Well, I don’t wanna think about it any”), a love song to his family declaring “I’m gonna climb into the sky/And let the city melt away”.
Emilee Sorrey on backing vocals, and strummed on what sounds like a ukulele, the breathily, falsetto sung shimmering ‘Sorry For Everything’ is an apology for those times when he feels he’s let his lover down (“I set you off again/Kinda like a bomb”) but even then it’s more about letting off steam (“You need a laugh/And I needed one too”).
A you bring the sunshine theme, ‘Definitely Heavenly’ opens with the sound of a musical box being wound up and playing before heading into another 60s psych-soul groove that recalls the lazing drift of the Young Rascals even if the line “what a day for a daydream” is a nod to The Lovin’ Spoonful.
The tempo steps up to a vaguely country jerking chug and beeping for ‘La La Land’ with its musically 60s pop mantra refrain “Love is strange, love is blind, love is true” and a time mapped reference with“Elon’s astronauts are stuck in space” , a metaphor perhaps for feeling “I fear fear is wasting my time”. There’s a lyric phrase La La link to the walking beat keyboards swirling ‘Floor Is Lava’ that plays like a state of the world’s madness commentary where “everything is sideways/Out here in the atmosphere/And it’s everybody’s problem/Some of us are watching/Don’t know if it’s fake or real”.
Chuffing like a steam train riding cosmic rails with syncopated drums and a snaky Prince groove, ‘Leave A Mark’ opens with a steal from ‘Dancing In The Dark’ singing “I get up in the morning/I try to get ahead/I come home in the evening/I wonder what I did”, before getting to the love letter point of the title “you leave a mark, leave a mark, baby/You leave it anywhere you like”, even if you’re just doing what you can.
It ends back in the oppressive summer heat with the descending chords, marching drum beat and melodic whorl of the Beach Boys-infused ‘Moonlanding’ as “hot pink flowers on the rhododendron wilt in the heat”, but his lover’s “the cool everything needs” as he decides to just lie there and “Think about you, thinking about me/Thinking about all the ways we think it should be”, ending with a brief trill of birdsong.
Dreamy fluffy clouds of retro pop with a sublime contemporary undercoating, life is definitely for the ‘Living’.