Elliott Morris - The Way Is Clear (2019)

Of Anglo-Scot descent and raised in Wales and Lincolnshire, blessed with a soft vocal burr somewhere between John Martyn and Seth Lakeman, Elliott Morris has been making quite a name for himself in folk circles over the past six or so years, both through a seemingly endless number of live gigs and the release of his 2017 debut album Lost & Found.

Designed to showcase the breadth of his musical styles and influences, it opens boldly with Wake, a ruminative instrumental featuring acoustic guitar, double bass and strings before moving on to Roll, a song about life on the road (“Another midnight check-in/Another cheap motel”) and the longing to be home.

It’s one of only two examples here of his distinctive percussive guitar tapping technique, the other, rather less so, being The Way Is Clear, a Celtic-folk tinged number about pushing yourself to get out of a déjà vu rut that, coloured by Hammond, bouzouki, whistle and mandolin, features a bluesy electric guitar solo midway and interpolates a tune called Bet On Fake Horses written by Aikin who plays in a band with Morris’s brother.

Built around the bassline and Carrack senior’s organ groove with bagpipes wading in towards the end, Out On The Ice is another road-based track (“if there’s one more road to go down/And there’s one more far away town”) this time with more of a funky blues undercurrent to its coming home to you theme.

The goal posts shift, however, for It All Depends, a Grand piano-accompanied whichever way the wind blows co-write with Hanna that plunges headfirst into chorus-friendly balladeering Celtic folk rock before things take a late night jazzy Martynesque turn on the compromise-themed (“you’ll never change your tune/If you only know one song”) The Way You Break with its tenor sax break and piano patterns. If you were wondering what it would sound like as an instrumental groove, the answer comes immediately after with Break.

Very much capturing a songwriter’s angst, another song about uncertainty, running round in circles chasing your own tail, trying to find yourself, putting faith in inspiration rather than repeating yourself, the soul-searching One Day You’ll Know is the longest track a Hammond-backed soulful slow burn sway clocking in at just under seven minutes.

A co-write with Hood who also sings harmonies, another Celtic-flavoured number, The Wild Man of the Sea takes a different lyrical path, drawing on the Suffolk legend of the hermit who was accused of being some evil merman, essentially a familiar tale of persecuting those who are different.

Sustaining a subdued note, it ends as it began with another instrumental, pretty much everyone contributing to The Pentre, a gradually building heartswell of a Mark Knopfler Local Hero persuasion inspired by and dedicated to the Pentre Arms pub in Langrannog in Wales, recorded on the beach one early September morning with the sound of the waves lapping over the closing seconds.

Complete with a fold-out annotated lyric sheet that features the guitar tunings as well as a map documenting where the songs were written, this unequivocally confirms Morris’s own must visit place on the contemporary folk scene map.