Review: Trust Fund – Bringing the Backline

Ellis Jones is a genius when it comes to capturing complex emotions. He chronicles relationships with a precise poetry and in melodies that can blindside you, unexpectedly shattering your heart. It is this combination of melodic power and painfully sharp detail that makes Trust Fund so special.

The emotional openness of Ellis’s lyrics feels particularly important now. His ability to chart his own feelings in such a frank and relatable way is an example to us all. While there’s little chance we’ll be able to do it as astutely as Ellis, we should open up just the same.

Ellis also writes fantastically catchy songs. Over the course of several releases, the Trust Fund sound has evolved, unafraid to absorb new influences and instrumentation. Bringing the Backline is similarly broad. The indie tropes remain – chants, big choruses, handclaps and a cornucopia of guitar sounds – but there are surprising elements too, synths and a clarinet solo among them.

The first thing you notice about Bringing the Backline is that it sounds cleaner, shinier, more glossy than previous releases. The lo-fi production has been largely left behind as has the subtle experimentation of We have always lived in The Harolds.

Album opener Blue X is a case in point. It kicks off in a swell of harmonies, strongly reminiscent of late 90s’ band Silversun. Although a bright burst of a song, its ability to move the listener on an emotional level is diminished. It just doesn’t compare to hearing a beautifully unassuming motif creep out from Ellis’s carefully curated sonic clutter like we did on We have always lived in The Harolds. The melodic intent is altogether more obvious on Bringing the Backline. It drives the songs, rather than emerging, uncanny and gently alarming, from the mix.

Rest assured though, this is no style-over-substance detour into vacuous hit-making. With lines like: “Got that sad, Sunday suicidal ideation eight days a week” Ellis is actively subverting the pop canon. And having fun doing so. There are plenty of intriguing musical ideas and killer hooks too that make Bringing the Backline a rewarding listen.

It is, however, the intelligence of the songwriting, the poet’s eye for detail and ear for rhythm, that gives Bringing the Backline its depth. Subject matter spans the EU referendum to house parties to the private worlds of WhatsApp group chats. And the familiar themes are here too, chief amongst them is what Ellis describes, tongue firmly in cheek, as the “fetishisation of regret”.

There are lyrical gems throughout, including the alliterative burn of “bruised banana of a boyfriend” and Embarrassing!‘s: “I’m a discontinued model of a dying breed”. The latter is possessed with a syllabic power that more than matches the muscular Weezer-esque chorus.

On A Song, Ellis delivers the line: “One thing a song can do is tell you with a terrible sureness exactly who your heart belongs to” with the palpable relish of early Morrissey. The track also contains a typically bittersweet, perfectly executed Ellisian paradox: “We don’t ever have to leave the house. But we live in different houses now.” These turns of phrase will stay with the listener long after the record stops spinning.

The album’s standout track Carson McCullers is unmistakably Trust Fund – layered melodies, huge hooks, guitar solos, and Ellis’s distinctive vocal. The upbeat tempo contrasts dramatically with the song’s heavy post break-up heart:

“For her messages, I would wait forever.
But the girls in the group chat alone know her plans for the summer.”

It’s a contemporary scene Ellis depicts, but the sadness conveyed is age-old: being denied access to the life of someone you’re trying so desperately not to love.

In Abundant, Ellis tries to distract himself from the reality of the breakup by listing all that he sees from a train window. A windmill, a golf course, a nuclear powerplant – snapshots of permeance, of clearly identifiable things in an emotional landscape that lacks such easy classification.

On album closer The Mill, a reflective take on McCartney’s Mother Nature’s Son, Ellis turns his back on relationships to assess the relative merits of his academic and musical careers.

The closing couplets read:

“The songs we write they will not last
All this dross we have amassed
Now me, my sister, and my brother
We all document the work of others”

Ellis doesn’t seem to realise that his songs could never be dross. Bringing the Backline, like the albums before it, documents the minutiae of his life in humble honest detail, and in turn reveal more about our own lives. This is as valuable as any PhD.

Pre-order the vinyl and digital download here

Review by Tom Spooner.