Reviewer: Will Richards

Released: 19th April 2015

Label: Downtown Records / Sony RED

Ellis Ludwig-Leone is pretty lucky. His vision for San Fermin, his oddball pop project, has been realised via a rabble of frighteningly talented musicians and friends who turn his laptop compositions into mountain-moving, epic final products.

Like San Fermin’s first, self-titled album from 2013, ‘Jackrabbit’ was born only on Ellis Ludwig-Leone’s laptop, but after the experiences that touring the first record with a band gave him, he decided to re-record the whole thing, and as such it has blossomed into a carnival of influences and adaptation via the seven musicians that end up making San Fermin. The debut tried to team nu-folk, full band cuts - shown best on the soaring ‘Sonsick’ and downbeat ‘Methuselah’ - with interludes showcasing Ludwig-Leone’s earlier incarnation as a classical composer. In actuality, this was only managed with strict boundaries between the two and limited crossover, making it a stunted listen. ‘Jackrabbit’’s biggest achievement, then, is the joining of these two opposites into a fully formed, flowing album, something ‘San Fermin’ never quite felt like.

Ludwig-Leone essentially tag-teams two of the finest, relatively undiscovered vocal talents throughout the record in Allen Tate and Charlene Kaye. The first ten tracks of ‘Jackrabbit’ see the pair working on a song on/song off basis, with Tate shining on ‘Emily’, and Kaye helming album highlight, the glorious title track. When they finally collide on ‘Parasites’, San Fermin are nearing the brilliance they’ve skirted around for so long, sharing verses and bouncing off each other before the track heads into a monstrous finale.

Ellis Ludwig-Leone has spent the time since the release of the first San Fermin album refining the elements that made the record so promising, moulding closer and closer together with the wonderful musicians and guest vocalists at his disposal. As such, he has created a second album with fluidity and togetherness ’San Fermin’ always promised but never realised. The improvements from the self-titled album can only be comprehensively taken in with a full listen of ‘Jackrabbit’, but using a second album to slowly build and improve an already vastly promising sound - instead of attempting an erratic reinvention - is something Ludwig-Leone should be commended for.

Tags: Album Reviews, Reviews, San Fermin