Dove Ellis: Blizzard review – Irish indie Enigma’s glorious debut justifies the hype | music

TThe information age has made it difficult for artists to cultivate mystery. Gone were the days when David Bowie could come full circle with Space Oddity and Hunky Dory, as most of the record-buying public were unaware of his years of struggle in bands like Lower Third; Or when Robert Zimmerman gets to be Bob Dylan and invent a backstory about running away with the circus as a teenager. Today’s artists are so intensely scrutinized once they have a glimmer of success that there’s always a chance that some internet sleuth will destroy a performer’s credibility by revealing a terrible video of them walking through the Wonderwall in sixth form. Which makes Dove Ellis quite unusual, because so little is known about him.

His debut album arrives with no biography and barely any information at all except the tracklist and a few simple details. He doesn’t appear to have ever given an interview, and in one song he berates him, saying, “Keep their cameras out of my face.” His publicist, whose job so far seems limited to sending out music, describes Ellis as an “introverted person.”

One can put this together: he is 22 and from Galway but has moved to Manchester. The songs he posted on Bandcamp led to a bidding war, but he rejected interest from major labels in going with an independent label. He recently opened for the Geese on their US tour dates but appears to have been playing pubs and small venues in London (including the bustling Windmill) and Manchester for a couple of years. Most recently, in October, he was opening a student evening at Sidney & Matilda in Sheffield, where he seems to have been caught up in the usual storm. His next show in London (at the ICA on December 9) sold out within an hour, but if his self-produced debut reaches rising expectations, it’s entirely down to the quality of the music.

The few reviewers who have seen Ellis so far mostly compare him to Jeff Buckley or his father Tim Buckley – fair comparisons given how Ellis’ gorgeous vocals can settle into a dreamy falsetto so fragile he could dance on a pin, and then suddenly perform a handbrake that turns intense, even furious. The way the arrangements (including saxophone and drums) move around his voice in small, textured counter-melodies is reminiscent of fellow Irishman Van Morrison, and final single To the Sandals noticeably references Joan Armatrading’s Love and Affection. Thom Yorke and Rufus Wainwright have also been mentioned, but none of these comparisons quite nail Ellis, not least because he changes his look so frequently.

Beautiful opener Little Left Hope starts out fragile like Nick Drake, but explodes into something more exciting, as the lyrics capture the rocky road to making music: “Maybe we’ll form a band / With the throttle you gotta like it / ‘Cause he knows how to play the drums.” Ellis’s words often seem to flit between hope and despair, before arriving at a cathartic conclusion. In the warm, charming song, the past is a problem that can perhaps be eliminated: “The past is like a mark / A mark that never speaks / A mark that you think you’ve lived / But it’s just a stone with a little bit of chalk.” On the intimate “Love Is,” he growls, “Love ain’t the antidote to all your problems,” but concludes, “Love is your last chance.” In “Jaundice” he uses an unexpected device of loud rock ‘n’ roll mixed with an Irish dance to seemingly protest against injustice: “Sometimes a baby is born without any face/At its mother’s misplaced breast.”

Ellis describes To the Sandals — a Bandcamp release now mixed/embossed by Big Thief producer Andrew Sarlo — in terms of “reflections on a failed shotgun marriage in Cancun.” Not that the unlikely theme of an ill-fated marriage precipitated by a pregnancy in Mexico is particularly evident in lines like: “From your grace/The sadist’s failure/Their red blade/Massed and sorted.”

Trying to unravel the meanings of the songs can become a parlor game, but it’s enough to savor his dazzling use of language or the sheer emotion in heart-swelling songs like When You Tie Your Hair. The ten tunes are so strong that they sound as familiar as old friends, and if Ellis isn’t reinventing the wheel, he’s certainly giving the old thing a coat of varnish. His songs sound finely crafted but the recordings themselves have a beautiful, intimate, unadorned feel. Occasionally, picked and strummed guitars, 70s rock piano, woodwinds and scattered percussion are interspersed with random sounds and distortion, but somehow everything seems to fall into place perfectly on this glorious debut.

Dave listened this week

Louis O’Hara – The Magpie
From Pembroke Dock in West Wales, this gentle folk tribute to a long-standing friendship is extraordinarily moving and truly beautiful.