Single Review: Imposter Syndrome

Ellery Daines is back with the second single from his forthcoming album, Failure Thirty Minutes Deep, and I really wish he would hurry up and release that as it something I am really looking forward to, given just how different this is to the last single, No-one, which I also really enjoyed. Originally from Nelson, but now residing in the Norwegian Arctic city of Tromsø, Ellery is a multi-instrumentalist who has been working on his album for some five years. Given that he wrote, performed, engineered, produced, and mixed everything, it is no real surprise it took so long as unlike many “multi-instrumentalists” I come across, he really is just that and the result is a song which sounds as if it were recorded by a band as opposed to one person living in the harsh reality that is the Arctic.

This is way more commercial than No-one, and while it has synth-wave at its heart there is also plenty of power pop and The Beatles, and I was surprised at just how much it reminded me of Dead Favours the more I played it, while Ellery states his influences include The Living End, Shihad, Muse and Queens of the Stone Age. Lyrically the song is something anyone interested in the underground scene, either as a musician or listener can really relate to, namely about being ignored as an artist. Ellery wrote it after giving up on performing music in New Zealand, frustrated after playing shows to mostly tiny audiences in an indifferent or hostile environment. “The people directly involved were all great, and there are so many extremely talented local artists around. But the general public by and large either didn’t seem to care about local music, or actively made noise complaints. After so many shows like that, you start to lose perspective and wonder if maybe they know something you don’t.”

With yet another wonderful song from his forthcoming debut, it is safe to say that the lack of audience in no way relates to the music on offer, as this is a catchy hook-laden number which gets into the brain from the first play, and the more time one can give it, the more there is to discover. It is simple yet complex, right on the surface but also incredibly deep. The accompaniment can be heavily distorted or perfectly clear, and it is the arrangement which makes this such a special song, with so much going on within but never sounding overcrowded or compressed.

Now, where’s the album?!