Our Man In The Field – The Company of Strangers
Rocksnob – 25 September 2020
Adopting the conceit of being an independent correspondent reporting on his travels and the people he’s met. Our Man in the Field is London-based actor/singer-songwriter Alexander Ellis’ debut album, a rather fine set of shuffling, pedal steel coloured Americana pop, occasionally sung in a dreamy falsetto that echoes the mood of the music.
It’s one such that gets the ball rolling with Thin (I Used To Be Bullet Proof), a song about growing older and being gradually worn down (“So come on do your worst/Get it over with/It’s not like I’m the first/Won’t be the last”), moving to the double bass accompanied, huskily sung I’ll Be Gone (Are You On My Side), echoing similar themes as he sings “Leave this game to someone else/Someone younger someone with more sense/Don’t ask me where the years went/I’ve been chasing other men’s dreams” adding “I’m going to cut this old life loose/Tried living it but it’s just no use/Bowing out gracefully/Looks good on you/But it just don’t suit me”.
It’s something to which he returns later on the slow waltzing steel and banjo flavoured It Is What It Is with “Don’t lean on me/I’ve nothing more to give/I’m tired/And I done my last shift…Don’t want to be part of anybody’s/Great plans/I’m happy here/Just as I am”.
Changing tack, the fingerpicked Eleanor’s Song is a simple pledge of devotion (“If you’ve spent your last shiny penny/Far from home and can’t borrow any…you can count on me”) then, by contrast, using his guitar for hand percussion and featuring banjo, Easy Going Smile is a regret-stained break-up number (“Turn away from me and don’t look back/We both know if one of us cracks/The other’s going to fail/Just as fast”).
Shifting from country tones to more of a folk-blues persuasion, the brushed drums moody shuffle Swansong (Don’t Play With Matches) is a cautionary tale about playing the, well, field and seeking greener grass, paraphrasing the quitters never win line with “Cheaters don’t win/Winners don’t cheat”.
It Was Ever So, which premiered here on Folk Radio, actually does come from an real life events and was written in 2014 after he read about the impending closure of Clerkenwell fire station, the oldest operational fire station in Europe, one of ten as part of then Mayor of London Boris Johnson’s cutbacks. It’s sung in the voice of one of the long-serving firemen being made redundant (“They wrote me to tell me it was done”) and leaving for the last time to become “just a man/And you must get by any way you can”.
Another sad slow waltz Stick Around again speaks of world weariness in another break-up scenario (“Was not so long ago/We were standing here/You had that fire in your belly/And I had only fear/Well now we’re back in that exact same place/And I can see that look/Hanging on your face”) and clearly shows a strong Van Morrison influence.
Heading into the final stretch, Pockets is an itchingly fingerpicked number that again has a seam of Celtic soul, this time however, for a rather more positive, supportive relationship (“Now we’ve found each other we’ll be fine/We don’t have an awful lot/But we only need what we’ve got/I’ll have some of yours and you’ll have mine”). There’s more restrained fingerpicking on the penultimate upbeat Don’t Speak which conjures Loudon Wainwright III (“Keep your mind on the road ahead/Don’t let it wander anywhere else instead/And forget about what we’ve done/Just keep thinking of what’s to come”), ending with the five-minute harmonica blowing blues I Like You So I’ll Kill You Last, a line borrowed from Andrea Arnold’s film Fish Tank and which, probably explaining why it’s musically different to everything else here, was written for the end credits of Grind, a short by director Ed Scott-Clarke in which he also plays a depressed and unemployed individual. Most definitely an album to be mentioned in despatches.
https://www.ourmaninthefieldmusic.com/
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram