Blizzard by Dove Ellis - a magically warm debut to get us through the winter
- HIDEOUS Magazine
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Words by Donovan Livesey
Photography by Xander Lewis
The digital era has made it near impossible for artists to cultivate much mystique. No one today can stage a sudden, fully formed arrival like Bowie or spin a romanticised origin story like Bob Dylan without someone online finding shaky school-assembly footage to spoil the illusion. The moment a newcomer generates even a flicker of excitement, their early missteps and awkward covers are hauled into the spotlight before they’ve had a chance to define themselves. Which is precisely why Dove Ellis feels so singular: almost nothing about him is known at all.
His debut album arrives without a biography and offers little beyond a track listing and a handful of minor details. His Instagram is sparse, limited mainly to tour dates - some small headline shows, others supporting Geese - and YouTube holds only a single half-hour set from the Windmill, packed with comments predicting “big things” ahead. Beyond that, Ellis remains largely undocumented: a quietly grafting one-man troubadour who seems comfortable letting the gaps remain.
Crucially, his secrecy never feels performative. It reads instead as genuine, as if success sits some distance down his priority list. He allows the music to speak first, and Blizzard is unmistakably an album driven by intuition and feeling. The opener “Little Left Hope” finds Ellis assembling his sound with tender precision: soft plucks, brushed percussion and buoyant strings working together to create a radiant warmth. His voice is astonishingly expressive, beginning with a Nick Drake-like fragility before swelling into something far more stirring, the lyrics sketching the uncertain road into music: “Maybe we’ll start a band / With the stranger you have to like / Cos he knows how to play the drums.”
Elsewhere, Ellis proves willing to take risks. “Jaundice” marries rollicking rock’n’roll with an Irish jig, all jangling momentum and gleeful rhythmic bounce. “Heaven Has No Wings” brings in woody reeds that place him in the orbit of acts like Black Country, New Road, while the strange sonic flickers bracketing “To the Sandals” hint at more experimental impulses than the album’s gentler core might suggest. The record’s dynamics remain gripping throughout, shifting from Irish sway to bolder, full-band lift-offs – and even slipping in a Christmas song without feeling twee.
Ellis channels a little of the buzz that once surrounded Black Country, New Road, back when they were drip-feeding early singles from the Windmill and everyone sensed they were onto something special. And, as with them, a lot of the excitement here stems from the voice at the centre of it all - Ellis’ vocals is the album’s greatest pull. At times he hovers in a dreamy falsetto so delicate it feels weightless; at others he pivots sharply into raw power or sudden fury. The arrangements - saxophone, drums, little darting countermelodies - weave around him with playful intricacy. You feel every crack and tremor, and on tracks like “Little Left Hope”, his multi-layered vocals bloom into an eerie, otherworldly choir. Then, on “Tie Your Hair Up”, he unleashes a soul-rattling roar, only to retreat into breathy intimacy on “Away You Stride”, a song that normally erupts on stage.
The album’s second half leans into a run of lovely, if slightly similar, acoustic ballads, but Ellis brings the journey full circle with a studio re-recording of “To the Sandals”. The songs are meticulously built, yet the recordings maintain a homely, unvarnished closeness, as though played in the room beside you. These ten tracks are so well-realised they feel like familiar companions from the first listen.
Blizzard delivers on the whispered hype while still signalling vast promise - the sense of a prophecy that’s both being fulfilled and only just beginning.
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