Admittedly, I'm a bit of a card when writing about music, and pursuant to my nature, I get the sense that I should begin this review with some kind of cowboy-themed line as the band I aim to tell you about is very likely named for a character from the show Justified...** It's more than a little amusing to me to think of an Australian band naming themselves after a former hooker from a '10s FX series about a rogue US Marshall with his own sense of justice, but then again, the outback of their native continent is a pretty treacherous place, which dwarfs the perries and dust bowl terrane of the American West, making our cowboy-cop dramas seem quaint and warmly relatable when viewed through their eyes. I mean, any yankee cow-poke caught out in that Australian scrub for even a day would likely be crying to his maker to be catapulted back to the rocky crevasses of Wyoming, if for no other reason than the fact that they have roughly four times the variety of venomous snakes on that big dusty island of theirs. But that's enough rambling through prolog- it's about time we gave these buckaroos their due. Ellen May are a pop-punk band itchin' to rustle up some feels on their EP A Lonely Way to Go- a record that explores the way in which relationships become strained through time and poor decisions, as well as how lonely the prospect of death is at the end of this long, taxing, indignant trot we call life. The morbid subject matter, as well as the way that the band's vocal delivery tends to draw out certain symbols to put special, gravelly, pain-stricken emphasis on them, certainly evokes comparisons to Alkaline Trio, but the guitar playing, and general melodic quality of their songs, has this bright, shimmering quality to it that you'd never hear from said gothic trifecta, instead calling to mind the rafters seeking, arena-sized, public confessional-boosting sonics of The Wonder Years. This is only a four-song EP, but it feels so much bigger than that, which is incredible because it doesn't immediately give off the pretense that it should be that momentous of a listen... And yet, it keeps managing to top itself. The EP starts with the slow burn and sudden burst of "How It Came To This" which will rattle your marbles like the cherry of the cigarette you've been slowly dragging on exploding into cinders after being caught by a stray bullet just beneath your unsuspecting nose. After this initial foray of excitement, we come across "Misconstrued," which kicks and stretches its way up the walls of a collapsing sinkhole. We then see the record gain its footing back just in time for the full-court dash of "Hawthorne," before leaving gravity behind entirely in a heady whirlwind of regret that rages on "Back To The Start," a track that blasts the listener into the air like a life-raft caught in a waterspout- thrown to the mercy of the elements and left suspended in a limbo of heated introspection. A Lonely Way to Go is anything but a desolate place to lose one's self. Instead, it's Ellen May's way of throwing down a ladder to help you climb out of whatever shallow grave you might have been digging.
* In March I am writing about a different album every day inspired by a unique color. Today's color eucalyptus inspired my review of Ellen May's record for... well, fairly obvious reasons.
** I have no hard evidence for this conclusion, but it makes a certain amount of sense...
