It’s been twelve years since Chris Elliot last put a record out, but Territories isn’t the kind of release that should be fast-tracked. Taking in elements of folk, blues, country and gospel, the album has found a fitting home on The Viper Label, the company started up by Paul Hemmings and Mike Badger of The La’s and the Lightning Seeds.
With its mix of melancholy and romanticism, Elliot’s music springs from that same soil – he worked closely with Hemmings on the album’s composition and production. Meanwhile the cover art, painted by Elizabetha Fox, shows a tiny white hut encircled by sweeping mountains, echoing the album’s pastoral influences. “I get most of my song ideas while I’m out in nature walking the dogs,” Elliot agrees. He writes with one foot planted firmly in Liverpool, the other in Wales, where his parents were born.
Likewise, his musical influences came straight down the bloodline. “I always really enjoyed sitting with big headphones on with my Dad’s vinyl collection when I was young,” he recalls. “Listening to Smokey Robinson’s ‘Tracks of my Tears’, Stevie Wonders ‘Heaven Help us all’ and ‘Superstition’ as well the albums ‘Graceland’, ‘Let it Be’ and ‘Led Zeppelin IV’ all had a big impact on me growing up.”
It was only when he picked up a Spanish guitar lying around the house that Elliot started making music in earnest, keen to commit his ideas to melody before they slipped through his fingers. While the early days revolved around forming bands with friends, the 2007 release of Fierce Truth & Fortune set him on his current path; a wistful odyssey of one man and his thoughts.
In Territories, his lyrics feed off Greek mythology as readily as everyday scenes. Runaround uses sunny fingerpicked guitar to map out an escape route, to leave the city and start over, fleeing the masses to head for the trees. It’s the kind of elegy dreamed up in box rooms and bar stools across Liverpool since time began. Six Pomegranate Seeds is a star-gazing ballad which meditates on the push/pull of the seasons, taking in the curve of the moon, fragmented memories, and the uneasy bargains we all learn to make with fate.
Towards the end of the record, Oh Love Shine a Light on Me rings out like a campfire hymn, a pilgrim’s hopes and prayers gathered up in a knapsack after twelve long years in transit. Then finally, Territories finds Elliot awaiting the morning sun with a mix of unease and resignation, bracing himself for yet another day. It’s a collection of songs which comes out of lessons learned on the road, each one its own quiet epiphany.
“I love that in the process of writing a song you can express something you maybe hadn’t quite fully realised inside of you or feelings about an event that you hadn’t quite processed yet,” Elliot explains. “They’re like little bookmarks through a lifetime – you can a play a song from years ago and be transported back to that time, what was going on and how you felt.”
All in all Territories is a wanderer’s letter home, bittersweet yet hopeful, making steady steps into the horizon and fighting the urge to look back.
Stream now Territories and follow @chriselliotmusic on Instagram for updates.
