★★★★☆
Some three-and-a-half years ago, without established industry contacts, I would peruse London’s gigs scene to try and secure interviews with artists the old-fashioned way: going up and asking them at the end of a show. At one of these events – run by respected underground label Slow Dance – I managed to secure such an interview: with Taylor Skye, the keyboardist and producer who has since gone on to turn heads as one-half of Mercury Prize-nominated Jockstrap.
But another artist, who played prior that evening and who was also, it transpired, a student at the prestigious Guildhall, likewise caught my attention. He had long, shaggy hair and sang in deep, wailing drawls like a wounded animal. He would go on to release challenging, at times tortured music; but much of it, like Jockstrap, is alluring for this very reason. And now, five years since signing for esteemed label Young, Ethan P. Flynn has released his debut album, Abandon All Hope.
With such a title, you’d be forgiven for expecting a fair amount of doom and gloom. Sure enough, there’s plenty of misery to wallow in. If you were seeking an album to listen to during bouts of loneliness, this LP will be well-attuned to your melancholy.
Its lovelorn opener ‘In Silence’, for instance, establishes a world where even “With good enough eyes / On a good enough day / I can see you / So far away”; even in the best possible circumstances, there’s the sucker-punch of still being distant to someone you love. Likewise, there’s the solitary coming-of-age of ‘Leaving The Boys Behind’, with its dawning realisation of getting older (“So this must be that place, that cursed place where all of the good things go to die”) amid a swirl of horns and tuba work.
Yet, like any work with a respectable degree of depth, though, there are moments – dare I say – of hope; or, rather, periods so lugubrious that they provide the most despairing among us that feeling of connection.
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The album’s lead single and title track settles on the age-old wisdom to “Take it one day at a time” with a country-folk twang that puts you in mind of a singer-songwriter sage like Bill Callahan; whilst underlying the sorrowful acoustics of ‘Bad Weather’, meanwhile, is really a message about how everything is transient, even periods of misery (just simply “Don’t let the bad weather outlive you / Take my bad advice, pull through”).
There is, of course, a certain irony to this all. At 25 years old, Ethan P. Flynn is grappling with, and relaying, all the challenging turmoil that plagues twentysomething life, and doing so with the wisdom of an aged soul. There’s a reason why he’s been entrusted on David Byrne records and has frequent studio sessions with FKA Twigs. Here’s a young man who’s wise beyond his years, able to tap into the eternal.
Photo: Danny Lowe
Take the album’s absolute pinnacle, too: the 16-and-a-half minute ‘Crude Oil’. The track was almost entirely written in two halves, six months apart – the first during an unsettling period for Ethan (following a break-up and house move), the second six months later with a fresh, detached perspective. As such, it embodies a true sense of a fluctuating existence. And not just lyrically (“I’ve been a little too sentimental for a little too long / I think I’m fundamentally getting it wrong”), but sonically it’s a dazzling soundscape that traverses folk, jazz and classical music with ease, showcasing Ethan’s gift as an all-round songwriter, not just a lyricist.
The penultimate minute on this track is the album’s crowning moment: a thudding instrumental of whirring guitars and scattering keys that hit you after the 15-minute build-up just prior. It’s a moment that typifies a record which, upon first listen, demands that you Abandon All Hope, only for you to find a small glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.
In his conversation with us, Ethan says he regards Abandon All Hope as “an album designed for when you really know it”; one that might not be at the top of the pile on annual albums lists this year or next but will endure as an LP to return to in years to come. In many ways, he’s right. This won’t be an album for you to immediately sink your teeth into, but give it time and allow its timeless, agonising themes to be played out, and his words will ring true.
Indeed, I may not have spoken to Ethan P. Flynn some three-and-a-half years ago, but like the truisms that run throughout the course of his debut album, he’s had a habit of finding me again.
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