George Ezra sounds as if he just strode out of the 60s after a few drinks with Johnny Cash. The bass baritone, can’t-go-faster guitar and lyrical delights in storytelling are intermittently diluted with some pop flourishes on his debut album Wanted on Voyage. The songs are woven together, many based on a period of solo travelling through Europe, and gain cohesion from this. At 21 years old and with a cherubic face, Ezra’s voice is often a shock to first time listeners. It differentiates him from the many other 20-something crooners with guitars but his style would easily lend itself to the Greenwich folk era. Witty revenge narratives for the most part make up for the obligatory sentimental romance motif, and there also clever word-plays and mediations on travel and time.
The radio-friendly romanticism of ‘Budapest’ is an easy, acoustic introduction to his music. Amidst the bohemian imagined scenes of Hungarian architecture (he never made it to Budapest before recording this album) Ezra sings sweetly ‘for you I’d leave it all’. ‘Barcelona’ is similar but less effective while ‘Blind Man in Amsterdam’ is a charming short story to end the deluxe edition (‘he said ‘when your adventure ends your next one will begin’’). ‘Listen to the Man’ is particularly Cash-esque with characterful guitar licks and a compelling 60s bluesy rhythm. Ezra’s voice is not cemented in bass, he slips into falsetto easily on ‘Leaving it up To You’ and ‘Stand by Your Gun’.
The love triangle of ‘Drawing Board’ is wittily sardonic, and is literally Ezra imagining different ways to murder his ex. Particularly fun are the lines ‘you mentioned taking a holiday and I recalled you couldn’t swim / so I booked us scuba diving off the North coast of Belgium’, ‘I’ll fill your pillow case up with snakes / the man eating kind’ and the brilliant ‘I haven’t seen you since so I’m praying that you’re mince’. It’s a great listen.
It is worth getting the deluxe version just for the song ‘It’s Just my Skin’ which could easily be about somebody with depression. The familiar motif of the black dog appears repeatedly (‘black dog haunts your mind, your world, your soul’) and the song is filled with melancholy and desperation with references to drowning. It’s full of poignant reflections including the lyric ‘I was never lonely ‘till the day that I was born / since that day I masquerade in a skin that I have worn’. It is a moving and unexpected song which lingers long after it ends.
‘Over the Creek’ and ‘Cassy O’ are strong offerings. The latter especially is a disguised contemplation of time, very cleverly written and hugely addictive: ‘well I got my tracing paper / so that I could trace my clock / and the bastard face kept changing / and the hands they wouldn’t stop / I was ripping out the battery / I received myself a shock / and to add insult to injury / I could still hear tick and tock’. The melody is infectious, particularly in the repeated ‘Cassy-o-o-o-o’ of the chorus and the guitar sounds as if it’s trying to outpace the seconds and minutes.
There are a few forgettable tracks in between but they are more than made up for by the highlight of the album, ‘Did You Hear the Rain?’. This is Ezra at his best, complete with an intense solo baritone vocal intro, it oozes character. There is something darkly meditative in the music and howling falsetto in the chorus make the lyric ‘oh did I send a shiver / down your spine?’ very apt. To top it off Ezra groans ‘Lucifer’s inside’ in a rich velvety vocal at regular intervals with devilish delight. When it ends it is like coming out of a trance.
Wanted on Voyage is a compelling and mostly unique debut from the young Bristolian. Not every song is a winner but Ezra has shown he is more than capable of some brilliant and exciting song-writing, humorous and intelligent, which bodes well for the futures of folk and blues in the UK. He is definitely one to watch out for.