The Little Unsaid - Atomise (2019)

There is so much of what makes Elliott such a good songwriter in those eleven small words. There is the realisation that the thread that connects us to life is fine and capable of snapping at any moment. There is the implication of solitude, of existing apart from the world. There is perhaps a hint of violence associated with the loss of a tooth, and all the other imagery that a tooth can suggest: teeth seen in a dream, for example, are said to symbolise death. There is the possible allusion to a loss of innocence in the fact that it is a milk tooth. And of course, there is the visceral visual image evoked by the words, an image that is at once surreal and strangely, utterly believable. All this tells you a great deal about Elliott’s lyrical preoccupations: mental illness and the alienating effects of depression; distance from other people and the frequent need for human contact; despair and loss; hope and recovery.

This has always been the case. A year ago The Little Unsaid released Selected Works, a snapshot of the group’s career up to that point, and though the songs were culled from different periods, they were united by an emotional candidness and a willingness to talk about difficult subjects that made them refreshing and demanding in equal measure. What made them work so well was Elliott’s innovative writing and the band’s accomplished musicianship. Tom Rose of Reveal Records recognised something special in their self-released back catalogue and gave Selected Works its platform. Atomise is the band’s first entirely new release for Reveal, and it more than vindicates Rose’s faith in them.

That opening track, Human, proceeds on a sad piano refrain accompanied by deceptively simple cello, subtle electronics and Elliott’s distinctive, delicate voice. He has been compared to Thom Yorke and Jeff Buckley, and there is something in those comparisons, but he is less showy and less histrionic than either, and all the more rewarding for it. He also has a way with a melody – there is almost a hint of Paul McCartney (albeit a very downbeat Paul McCartney) in Human. The apparent ease of its composition provides a direct counterpoint to the harsh realities of its content: loss of love and loss of the self in the use of prescription drugs and recreational narcotics.

Screws trades the piano for a fingerpicked guitar, but Elliott’s eye for a surreal, almost grotesque image remains intact: ‘You see demons chewing Rorschach butterflies.’ The attention to musical detail is admirable too. Far from being run-of-the-mill acoustic guitar fare, Screws is littered with disembodied plinks and slow-moving strings (the strings on the album are arranged by Alison D’Souza, one of three full-time members along with Elliott and drummer Tim Heymerdinger). Story is even stranger, full of woozy, synthetic backing vocals that conjure up the Cocteau Twins, while Spiderman advances on a quietly insistent pattern of drums. There is even a nod to the minimalism of Steve Reich and Terry Riley, and maybe some elements of Peter Gabriel or Peter Hamill, on the circling, hypnotic synths of Music, whose lyrics deal succinctly with the paradoxical coexistence of love and pain.

The title track is ostensibly more conventional – drums, bass, a strummed guitar – but halfway through Elliott’s voice, which has until now been kept in check, rises in a pained cry of ‘I love you unfathomably’. It is tempting to think of that single line as the centre point of the entire album, around which everything else revolves, and it is not too fanciful to suggest that all of the hope and despair contained in those words radiate outwards and permeate each of these songs.

It is clear that Elliot’s musical influences have widened since his last album. Road even takes from the synth ballads of the 1980s but reinvents them as something altogether more moving. On Ignited he examines, amongst other things, his own difficult relationship with the creative process, afraid that he is turning his feelings into ‘something cheap and sentimental.’ Most artists, of course, go through periods of self-doubt, but to examine that self-doubt so explicitly and to make art out of it is much rarer.

Little Unsaid albums, because of their extremely personal subject matter, are unavoidably autobiographical, and Atomise is no exception. Particles, in particular, feels extremely close to the bone, filled as it is with the minutiae of a relationship. It finds its counterpoint in the liquid funk bassline of Chain, a brooding slab of future-folk-pop. Moonrise, like many of Elliott’s songs, exists in the uncertain ground between soothing and discomforting, with the uncanny juxtaposition of soft synths and strings and troubled or darkly cryptic lyrics. The closing track, Willow, is a perfect synthesis of hope and catharsis, a moment of quiet release and realisation of the value of shared experience.

Many writers – poets and authors as well as songwriters – occupy themselves with the edges of things, with margins and borders. Often these are physical, geographical, concerned with place and exterior space. Elliott to is concerned with limits and margins, but his limits are those of the human mind, his margins are the borders between mind and body. He has carved out a niche as a poet of mental disintegration, a chronicler of very real and very difficult human emotions. But his songs are not without hope. Atomise is perhaps his darkest and most hopeful album to date. It is certainly his most expansive and fully realised.