With Just A Hint Of Mayhem

ELL!S a.k.a. Ellis Watson, is a singer-songwriter from the Cotswolds in England. There are some beautiful places there, and now there is some beautiful music emanating from those parts thanks to ELL!S. There have been musical connections with the region in the past. Elgar and Holst spent time there, and the Who’s bass player John Entwistle is buried there. Unsurprisingly The Who’s Keith Moon once owned a pub in the area. But there hasn’t been much music of note this century so far. ELL!S says that he began writing songs when he was 9 or 10 and has several musical influences which include Roddy Frame, the Trashcan Sinatras, The Sundays, Elliot Smith, and Suzanne Vega. I can hear some of those providing a small influence in his new track “Best Year Of My Life” released at the tail end of last year. It floats along in a soft, ethereal folk rock march and soaks into your brain like some of the finest acoustic tunes do. He seems to have great pop sensibility, and listening to this song it really feels like he is singing about the best year of his life. But if he keeps producing songs like this I suspect there may be even better years ahead! Incidentally, I discovered ELL!S while searching for something else on Spotify, what a lucky find that was!

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