Singer song­writer Ella Clay­ton’s recent sin­gle called Dolomites (reviewed here) was quirky and com­pelling, and now her sopho­more album Could It Be You? pro­duced by Lester Duval has dropped (24th April). The new work was record­ed in three days at George Ezra’s Hotel Que­bec stu­dio, keep­ing it sound­ing fresh and immediate.

Ella want­ed this album to feel like a ‘warm hug’ and that’s a per­fect image to car­ry in your head when lis­ten­ing to it. Right now we could do with some warm hugs in our lives.

The album opens with Please Me, a bluesy bal­lad that whoosh­es you straight off your sofa and into a smokey late-night venue. In fact the album is low on stu­dio trick­ery and high on “live from your local blues-bar” in feel. And in keep­ing, Ella’s vocals are warm and earthy with a nat­ur­al strength. 

The fol­low­ing num­ber Mouth Said Mon­ey ramps things up a lit­tle and embraces Ella’s rock­i­er side with the bass promi­nent in the mix. It’s all about a brief encounter with a man­ag­er whose big promis­es dis­solved just as quick­ly (how many times have I unfor­tu­nate­ly heard this story).

Hear­ing Dolomites nest­ed into the album rather than a sin­gle is an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence and makes me realise just how pow­er­ful this track is. It’s good to appre­ci­ate it all over again. The slinky mid­dle sec­tion and Ella’s earthy vocals are a treat. It’s going to sound great live.

Rip­ples is backed by vio­lin instru­men­ta­tion that height­ens the emo­tion­al weight as Ella lays bare her dev­as­tat­ing nar­ra­tive of loss. “Now there are rip­ples in my bed­sheets, I can’t help feel­ing incom­plete…” she intones the lyrics as the song fades out.

Title track Could It Be You? is all about a date at the cin­e­ma “You gave my thigh a squeeze, oh no, there’s pop­corn on the floor”. My first thought is that con­duct­ing an ear­ly date with some­one at the cin­e­ma isn’t the best idea… but to return to the song, it’s a beau­ti­ful­ly soft bal­lad with rich har­monies on the cho­rus. And Octo­ber Trip takes Ella into Amer­i­cana ter­ri­to­ry which she exe­cutes flaw­less­ly as the plain­tive slide gui­tar notes embell­ish the track.

Album folk-lean­ing num­ber As You Are begins with lush retro vio­lin and gui­tar notes as Ella cel­e­brates pla­ton­ic friend­ship. The finale cir­cles back to the open­ing instru­men­ta­tion and lets loose… it’s a per­fect clos­ing num­ber to a var­ied, con­fi­dent album that show­cas­es the ver­sa­til­i­ty of this soul­ful singer-songwriter. 

Ella Clay­ton Could It Be You? album release date 24th April
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