At eight songs only in length, Lonesome Goldmine is an un-self-indulgently concise collection whose pieces move in woozy mid-tempo, pleasingly drifting yet rhythmically so, in a flutter of brushed drums, muted keyboards and gently plucked strings. Although the individual songs are clearly demarcated there is a sense of stream-of-consciousness to the lyrics which, alongside the consistently imaginative backing, creates a definite, cohesive, whole. It reveals some kinship (best illustrated on the excellent winding meditation that is “The Going Prayer”) to Linda Perhacs’s Parallelograms, in both mood and in Ellicott’s ability to create multi-tracked vocal structures, even including the occasional but always effective use of mild dissonance. Although an airy affair, at heart, Ellicott can reach some down-to-ground lyrical territory, as illustrated by “Babya’s” blunt “I went to the Bible, I went to the bottle, I went to the end of the line”.... Click here to read the complete article.
