In a fairly saturated landscape of middle-class British men peddling warm-hearted guitar pop, Hertfordshire singer-songwriter George Ezra sticks out as the most interesting of the bunch. Though his jolly, shoulder-shimmying songs seem all blue skies and ice-cold lager tops, Ezra’s idiosyncratic sense of humour (for a time, he cultivated an exceedingly well-behaved alter-ego called Geoff) consistently shone through his parade of sunny anthems.
In recent years, the artist has spoken candidly about his experiences with OCD, and at the centre of many of his biggest hits – which often explored escaping away to hotter climes and leaving the real world behind – a hint of something darker hovered around the gravelliest edges of his booming voice. On his first two wildly popular albums – 2014’s debut Wanted on Voyage and Staying at Tamara’s four years later – these more fatalistic threads felt under-explored, only really cutting through in the anxiety-addled core of Get Away and First Aid Kit-featuring outlier Saviour. “All of me is all for you” he sang on the latter, a brooding ballad, “and what I’ve got to give is not enough.”
