Album Review: Rory Nellis – Ready For You

Rory Nellis is a singer songwriter, he’s one quarter of the band Seven Summits, but he’s now building his own solo career, with two EP’s under his belt and now a full length, ‘Ready For You  Now’.

The first track, ‘One Good Reason’ starts the proceedings, with a finger picked acoustic and Rory softly asking ‘Sing your love songs loudly, Sing them with everything you have got’, leading to a lovely passage of harmonising vocals. Piano is gently added throughout the song as accompaniment, and surprisingly after two minutes electric guitars and drums are introduced giving drive to the repeated harmonies.‘Not a Bad Town’ reminds me of ‘Kings Of Convenience’ well employed vocal harmonies over shuffled drums and rolling piano, telling a story of a city, people struggling, but it being a place with soul, where leaving gives respite and time to recount.

‘Diosa’ invokes the spirit of Thom York, there’s a definite feel of Radiohead here, but it’s not smothering.  There’s a great structure to the song, nice chord progression  and great production give the drums real impact where it’s needed. The next couple of tracks ‘Books’ and ‘Mind Control’  step up the tempo a little, this is  indie rock music moving away from the acoustic numbers previous , Nellis manages to extend his vocal range on this, showing his voice is rather versatile. ‘Storm Coming’ begins life with a delicate piano line reminiscent of Tori Amos, but leads into a rather morose  slow moving affair, about some upheaval on the horizon.

A style change is in order for ‘Opposite Side’ incorporating beats from the more electro side of indie music, there are lovely vocal harmonies to be enjoyed here, but perhaps it’s a step too far in style from the previous tracks. There’s steel  drums incorporated in ‘Ready for You Now’ , big production and James Bondesque sound of ‘Outdoorsman’,  ‘Pushing  On’ tends to move back to the style of the first few tracks with lush sounding drums, and vocals really on point. ‘Tap Tap’ is a lonely rendition, with some wonderful musicianship, it’s  a big sound followed by a soulful ‘The Moon’, comparing a love interest to the sunlight on the moon.  ‘Brave Faces’ has neat finger picking and is similar again to the early tracks, that ‘Kings of Convenience’ comparison  is there again, a song to whisk you away at the end of the album.

There’s influence in sound coming from different directions all over this album, like Jeff Buckley and Simon and Garfunkel to Elliot Smith and Radiohead.  The album has been really well produced with lush drums, pianos and guitar throughout. Nellis has covered a lot of ground on this album, and he’s maybe pushed those boundaries too far in places, as the flow gets lost somewhere in the middle of the album once or twice. There’s real ambition apparent in his work, and although this is far from a masterpiece, there are definitely some shining moments on this album.  This rainy day album is worth a listen , and I expect it won’t be the last we hear from this emerging talent.