There’s a particular alchemy that happens when a young artist stops trying to be everything and starts being honest. Halifax’s Ellur has found it on At Home In My Mind, a debut album that feels both achingly personal and generous enough to invite the rest of us in. This isn’t confessional songwriting as performance, it’s confessional songwriting as connection, an arm extended to anyone who’s ever felt unmoored in their twenties and wondered if they’d ever find solid ground.
Recorded with producer Joel Johnston at his Leeds studio, At Home In My Mind is a deliberate scrapbook of influence and experience. Ellur has spoken openly about the sonic touchstones that shaped this record, the 90s indie rock of her childhood, the glitch-pop discoveries of her late teens, the alt-folk she’s come to cherish now, and rather than forcing these into awkward cohabitation, she’s built them a house where they can exist naturally together. The result is an album that moves fluidly between moods and textures without ever losing sight of its emotional core.
Opening track ‘God Help Me Now’ sets the tone immediately: vulnerable, articulate, unafraid to sit in discomfort. Ellur’s voice, sublime and swooning, as The Line Of Best Fit accurately described it, carries a weight that belies her years. There’s a maturity here that has nothing to do with polish and everything to do with emotional honesty. She’s not performing introspection; she’s documenting it in real time.
‘Missing Kid’ follows with a more propulsive energy, the production opening up to reveal the kind of anthemic potential that’s earned her comparisons to Sam Fender and The 1975. But where those artists often reach for stadium-sized catharsis, Ellur keeps things intimate even when the arrangements swell. It’s indie-pop architecture built on a folk foundation, big enough to move you, small enough to feel personal.
‘The Wheel’ and ‘Dream Of Mine’, the latter currently on BBC 6 Music’s playlist, showcase Ellur’s ability to wrap difficult emotions in melodies that stick. ‘The Wheel’ in particular feels like a centrepiece, its cyclical structure mirroring the lyrical themes of patterns we can’t quite break, mistakes we keep making, lessons we learn and forget and learn again. There’s a Bon Iver-esque quality to how the song builds and breathes, layers accruing gradually until you’re inside something much bigger than where you started.
‘Yellow Light’ offers a moment of self-acceptance rather than optimism, a declaration of love, as Ellur puts it, to the parts of herself she can’t change. It’s one of the album’s most overtly guitar-driven moments, leaning into the indie-pop catchiness of The 1975 and Sam Fender with repetitive, insistent melodies that work their way under your skin. Ellur has said she intentionally left the lyrics open-ended here because the song is really about the melodies, and that trust in pure musical hooks pays off. It’s immediately accessible without being simple, the kind of track that reveals its emotional complexity gradually. That it’s her mum’s favourite feels fitting; there’s something generous and warm about it, even as it grapples with indecisiveness and the defensive patterns that complicate relationships.
Then comes ‘The World Is Not An Oyster’, perhaps the album’s most direct statement of intent. The title alone is a rejection of the toxic positivity that gets sold to young people as wisdom, and the song itself is a clear-eyed assessment of what it actually feels like to come of age in uncertain times. There’s anger here, yes, but more than that, there’s clarity. Ellur isn’t railing against the universe; she’s simply refusing to pretend that struggle is the same thing as opportunity.
‘Disintegrate’ and ‘Lonelier In Heaven’ form a powerful emotional couplet in the album’s back half, both songs grappling with the particular loneliness of self-awareness, that strange condition where understanding yourself doesn’t necessarily make things easier. The Radiohead and Thom Yorke influences she’s mentioned are most audible here, not in direct imitation but in the willingness to let songs be strange and uncomfortable, to resist resolution when resolution would be a lie.
The title track ‘At Home In My Mind’ arrives late, and its placement feels intentional. By now, we’ve travelled through enough emotional terrain to understand what “home” means in this context, not a place of arrival but a practice of acceptance. Joel Johnston’s production throughout has been restrained and intelligent, but here it feels particularly attuned to what the song needs: space, warmth, room to breathe.
Closer ‘Knowing’ ends the album on a note that’s neither conclusive nor despairing. It’s the sound of someone who’s figured out that growing up isn’t about having answers, it’s about learning to ask better questions. There’s a folk directness to it, but also an openness that recalls Big Thief’s approach to emotional excavation: careful, patient, willing to sit with ambiguity.
What makes At Home In My Mind impressive isn’t just Ellur’s songwriting or her vocal delivery or Joel Johnston’s sympathetic production, though all three are excellent. It’s the emotional intelligence underpinning the whole project. This is an artist who understands that connection requires vulnerability, that reaching out means admitting you need help too. In an indie landscape often crowded with either detached cool or performative emotion, Ellur’s sincerity feels radical.
The comparisons to Sharon Van Etten and Sam Fender that have followed her aren’t unwarranted, but they also risk obscuring what’s distinctive about Ellur’s approach. She’s working in a similar emotional register, yes, but her Calderdale Valley upbringing and her particular constellation of influences have produced something that feels specific to her experience, her place, her moment.
As a document of a young woman navigating the uncertainty of her mid-twenties in Yorkshire, At Home In My Mind is vivid and unflinching. As an indie-folk-pop debut, it’s assured and cohesive. But as an invitation, which is ultimately what Ellur has said she wants this album to be, it succeeds completely. This is music that extends a hand and holds on.
Live Dates
10th February – Rough Trade Denmark Street, London (in-store show)
11th February – Crash Records, Leeds (in-store show)
25th Feb – Soho Calling, Third Man Records, London
25th April – Albany Arcade, Halifax
26th April – King Tuts, Glasgow
28th April – Strange Brew, Bristol
29th April – Colours, London
30th April – Yellow Arch Studios, Sheffield
23rd May – Neighbourhood Weekender, Warrington
1st August – Kendal Calling
2nd August – Camp Bestival
The Setlist & The Script 
Leave a comment