Ellen & The Escapades - All The Crooked Scenes

Kicking off with the gently swung, earnest ‘Run’, it’s almost amazing how slick an outfit Ellen & The Escapades have become. A sudden flurry of interest a couple of years back suggested they could make a break for the radio mainstream, but a more gradual progression has instead been their fate. Whether this has led to their tracks being more refined and in some ways more facile or if that’s a case of mistaken causation is moot; certainly given the bounds of the genre they operate in it’s distasteful to begrudge them a crack at the big time and mean-spirited to suggest they aren’t more talented than half the folk-pop also rans out there.

These matters aside, and the fact that ‘Run’ bears some similarity to ‘Can’t Make It So’, ‘Yours To Keep’ and ‘Stone Cast’, the album is still remarkably listenable – and crucially, it retains some of that character that marked the early band out as a little bit special. Of course front and centre is Ellen herself, husky-of-voice and in fine lyrical form, and her understated vocal performances never disappoint. Used on ‘All the Crooked Scenes’ to counterpoint atmospherics not found elsewhere on the record, they also point the way to a potentially more interesting future for the band’s sound. ‘Without You’ on the other hand is the rollicking folk-pop that most are probably expecting; like The Crocketts – albeit without the self-destructive tendencies – though it’s a little less interesting it is a vessel that could take them far.