Our Man in the Field Creates Spacious Orchestral Soundscapes On ‘Gold On the Horizon’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

Photo Credit: Tom Oxley

Alex Ellis, the UK Americana-oriented singer-songwriter, under the moniker Our Man in the Field, has teamed with esteemed producer Tucker Martine (Rosanne Cash, Bill Frisell, Modest Mouse) for his second independent release, Gold on the Horizon. As the moniker suggests, this is an album of observations as Ellis shuns any autobiographical tales in favor of the story and its characters. It’s his way of describing these same people that make his lyrics relatable. There is a wide span of sonics on the album from sparse to orchestral as the credits list sixteen others accompanying Ellis and his acoustic guitar on various tracks for the recording in Portland, OR in December of 2021. 

The album opens with “Feel Good,” rich with background vocals, horns, and baritone guitar. The “don’t it make you feel good” is the sarcastic question posed to the tour manager who spent away the band’s proceeds. From these layers of sonic tapestries, Ellis moves into his most sparse configuration, just his guitar and pedal steel in “Come Back to Me,” as the protagonist yearns for a lost love. “L’ Stranger” was inspired by existentialist author Albert Camus’ book of the same name as Ellis’ character ruminates on how he’s different from the rest, one who enjoys polarity and is more comfortable being alone than anything else with the pivotal line -” I’ll put my faith in hope because hope is all I need.”

The piano ballad “The Great White Hope” is a bit abstract but seems to point to how the politicians and media have fooled us into thinking that the future will improve, a salient element of Ellis’ thinking as he often raises provocative questions of this ilk, none more so than on “How Long,” the album’s strongest track. This ethereal drenched tune with Ellis’ comforting voice fronting haunting background harmonies, is about being stuck in a cycle of extremes that we can’t control. It’s about our current divisive state, interesting in a way coming from a UK’s musician point of view, but so spot on about our increasing unwillingness to find middle ground, to find some kind of compromise. The album takes its title from a line in “Silver Linings,” a warm ballad that finds the character searching for a new start. Even the title could be viewed as a sarcastic view of the elusive dream that our socio-political landscape will eventually right itself.

The spacious, lightly orchestral “Go Easy” is empathetically tuned to a similar feeling, emphasizing our need to find peace within ourselves by shutting out things that we can’t control. He gets more upbeat in another ambient, string and pedal steel bathed “Glad to See You,” where “every wound heals in the end.” Tempo ratchets up for the single, “Last Dance,” as a country fiddle, supple backbeat, and well-placed harmonies back Ellis’ all too frequent tale about a romantic breakup where one partner wants to sneak away quietly while the other seeks one last redemptive chance.  The album closes with the confessional tale of a fugitive on the run in “Long Forgotten.” The character lays it all bare, wanting to put his checkered past in the rearview in a phone call to a close friend over light piano chords, sweeping pedal steel, and vocal harmonies. 

Throughout Ellis (Our Man In the Field) is mostly direct lyrically, and every song is sonically warm to match Ellis’ vocal timbre. Sometimes it’s a bit too smooth and mired in a slow tempo but there’s no equivocating on how well the voice and accompaniment fit so well together. Ellis claims to have taken inspiration from the likes of Van Morrison, Neil Young, and Wilco, but his point of view and sonics are distinctly modern-day and he is forging a singular path.

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