Album opener “Perfect Strangers” is a work of friskily acrobatic, cinematic orchestration that traces initial infatuation to inevitable antipathy. The protagonist’s wryly bleak prediction? Getting to know a lover intimately is bound to ruin everything.
A couple of tracks later, in the fetchingly broody “California,” Ellis zeroes in on a woman depleted by rearranging and relocating her life for her partner, only to be left alone. “Maybe I’ll move to California, with the unbroken part of my heart I still have left,” he sings in a keen, reedy tenor lost in listless daydreaming. “Maybe I’ll fall in love again someday; I’m not gonna hold my breath.”
Ellis can’t decide exactly how fatalistic the vignette is. “Sometimes I hear ‘California’ as very hopeful: ‘In the wake of this tragedy, I have all these opportunities, things that I can do.’ Then other times I hear it as almost sarcastic, like she’s really saying, ‘I don’t know what-the-fuck I’m supposed to do.’”
The musical liveliness of “Drivin,’” propelled by a light-footed train beat and beelining acoustic and electric guitar licks, belies the lyrics’ vivid portrayal of passivity—a man cowering from mutual dissatisfaction in his marriage. “Oh, I just wish you’d go to bed,” Ellis whines impatiently, “without the expectation that I’ll come up there and say something to help you feel like things aren’t such a mess.”
In “You’re Not the One,” “It’s Not OK” and “Elephant,” the protagonists tie themselves in knots. One strains against the stranglehold of lust for a forbidden woman. Another is tormented by the pattern he’s fallen into: undermining the partnership he’s supposedly committed to by indulging in the trysts he craves. But the album’s most conflicted character appears on “Elephant.” Over a tense, prickly guitar figure, Ellis plays a man who’s lost faith in the model of marriage he once agreed to—not to mention in his own conscience—and for whom the idea of loving, monogamous devotion has mutated into something more like imprisonment.
Ellis has no trouble naming the emotions that color these deftly executed songs. “There’s a lot of anxiety and a lot of insecurity and guilt,” he says, “and sort of struggling with, ‘Should I feel guilt about things?’”
But that’s about as far as he’s willing to go. “I’m not sure if the characters are likable,” he offers with a small laugh. “I’m sure that’s up to the listener, and whatever they’re going through.”
“I’m sure every writer puts themselves into their material somewhere or another,” offers Ellis, “but I’m not gonna discuss details of my marriage with anybody. And I’m definitely not going to, in my opinion, ruin the surprise of connecting with these songs in a way that’s meaningful to the listener. And it’s not really even to protect me. Like, I don’t give a shit. I don’t mind talking about my life to people that I know. I think the strength of these songs is that they can be kinda ambiguous. If you just listen to ‘em and connect with them in that way, I just think it’s a much better experience. I think if you listen to the songs on here, there’s not one side.”
The Fat Angel Sings 