“I was very precious with this first body of work. I kind of wrote things and produced things at a snail’s pace. But only because I wanted to make sure I got it right,” Ellington Ratliff tells us over Zoom. His debut solo EP is days away from dropping when we talk, and his excitement and love for the project are palpable. Now, it’s finally here.
Ellington is probably best known for his time as the drummer in pop-rock band R5 as well as the spinoff project The Driver Era, but he is carving out his own sound surely and fiercely. His solo debut, ELLINGTON, is a tribute to his genuine love of music. From the Greenwich Village sing-songwriters to JPEGMAFIA, it’s all in there. But it’s also just...Ellington Ratliff. Almost every bit of the EP from the lyrics to instrumentals to the vocals to production was done by Ellington himself.
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“I wasn’t always necessarily the producer in my projects, so once this came about I was like ‘Alright, time to learn how to produce and things like that,’ which is why it kind of took a long time,” he explains, going into his process for creating his first solo venture. He had a little bit of help though, “I wrote with my friend Oliver on ‘Beauty Is Terrifying’ and he did the slammin’ guitar solo at the end.” And “slammin’” is definitely the best way to describe it.
It seems a daunting task to take on new roles in your creative work, especially a solo debut, but Ellington’s sound is so sure of itself if it was daunting, that doesn’t come through in the music. “It was very... stressful, but I loved just having the freedom able to do whatever I want,” he says with a smile. “I’ve always had to make creative decisions regarding what other people thought.” Now, those decisions are his, and the result is a five-track EP that begs to be listened to on a loop.
He started working on this project a year or more before COVID shut the world down last spring. In fact, he had just met with his mixer -- the legendary Mark Needham who has worked with The Killers, The 1975, Fleetwood Mac, Shakira, and everyone in between -- a few weeks before lockdown. So while the rest of the world slowed down, Ellington sped up.
The EP’s first single, “EMT,” dropped back in December of 2020 and opens the EP with a bass line that rivals the bass line The Strokes’ “On The Other Side” for bass lines that are just a straight-up groove and stick with you long after the song is over. (If you know, you know. If you don’t, please take a moment to listen to both tracks.) Combined with the contemplative singer-songwriter lyrics, it shows how his many influences converge into one sound. It’s the lyrics, for us though, that really linger.
He sings in the pre-chorus (over the aforementioned bass line), “Sometimes life can be so mean, when you get everything you need. Yeah, when you want what you can’t keep. You’re quite like me.” Which struck us in a way it probably wouldn’t have if we had heard the song pre-pandemic. The chorus then leads into a reverb-filled guitar riff that The Kills would be envious of. “EMT” is heavy. In both its sound and its content. Its dark humor forces you to look at how a life with everything can still feel empty. But it’s so damn catchy it’s hard not to just lean into your feelings and put it on repeat. That is how the whole EP is. It begs to be repeated, with layers peeling back with every listen, giving you more than you could possibly absorb on one go.
“Sun To Rise!” was the second release from the EP, dropping earlier this year. The alt-rock vibes continue in this song, with rock influences like Queens of the Stone Age and Arctic Monkeys come through. In the track Ellington sings “I keep waiting on that sun to rise.” But from the artistry displayed on this EP, we would say it already has.
For those familiar with his other work, ELLINGTON is probably closer to the remixes he has done for tracks by The Driver Era and Glass Animals than anything else. When we ask him if there were any other artists he would love to put the Ellington spin on, he quickly answers with Run the Jewels and James Blake, two huge favorites of his. Although he did admit that working with people of that caliber could be intimidating. On the flip side? Sault is who he would want to remix his own music. Just a few more of his vast musical inspirations that show themselves in bits of his EP. There is something for everyone in these four songs.
He views this work as a starting point. While he isn’t sure where his sound will go, to use his words “some of the picture is colored in.”
Following this release, we can assure that fans, new and old alike, will be anxiously awaiting to see what the rest of that picture looks like.
ELLINGTON is out now.
WATCH MORE: The Driver Era answers fan questions
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