Singer/songwriter and composer Luke Elliot is hitting the world stage once more, set to release his latest album, The Big Wind, on May 8th, 2020. The record will follow up Elliot’s highly-acclaimed debut album, Dressed for the Occasion, which was released in 2016.
By Elliot’s own admission, the album came about in a rather unorthodox manner. “I went into the studio without any real plans,” he said. “I just convinced everyone around me I could make another good record and they all seemed to believe me.”
Fans of the artist’s dark, crooning style will find much to love in Elliot’s sophomore set. Full of a poised grandeur, the album expertly delves into universal themes that strike deep. “Everybody’s Waiting on You” seethes with a quiet, bitter heartbreak, while the piano ballad “Never End Up” mourns dreams derailed.
In “The Big Wind,” ominous scenes of a disrupted daily life play out while “God’s off someplace else instead.” Just as with real life, however, in the midst of uncertainty and heartache come joy, and The Big Wind offers a Celtic-tinged celebration of matters close to the heart in “Paradise.”
The piece de resistance of The Big Wind is the song around which the album developed: “All on Board.” Of the brooding, bittersweet single, Elliot told American Songwriter, “It felt like this song was too big for us to get our arms around, so we just watched it grow, occasionally guiding it left or right. We would go into the studio while making the rest of the record and just go back to this track once in a while and see how it was developing. But it stayed with us through the whole process. When it was ready, the rest of the album was.”
Elliot credits his work with Swedish multi-instrumentalist Bebe Risenfors (known for his work with Tom Waits and Elvis Costello) as well as Norwegian guitarist Freddy Holm with helping crystallize the final vision for the album.
“The melodies came pretty quickly for a lot of these tracks, but the lyrics were grueling. It took me a while to figure out just what I was trying to say,” Elliot explained. “I was blessed to work with Bebe Risenfors and Freddy Holm here. They were both extraordinary and without their contributions, who knows what you would’ve ended up listening to.”
New Jersey-born Elliot is known for taking eloquent dives into the deeply personal for his musical stories – framing them in haunting melodies that move deep within his listeners. He kicked off his music career working a sales job outside of Princeton while writing and playing his music live on the weekends. Elliot continued to work in the New York area until a chance meeting with a Norwegian journalist led to a writeup in V.G., the leading Norwegian daily newspaper. That article launched Elliot’s move to Oslo and his first wildly successful European tour.
The Big Wind is the next step in that journey – one that, like the album itself, Elliot continues to shape as he moves along.
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