Dove Ellis - Blizzard (2025)

Seems like just about every year lately, we music writer types, come December, are ready to put the finishing touches on our year-end lists and close up shop until January 2nd or so, but one spectacular late-year release manages to make revisions necessary (personally, Adeem the Artist in 2022 and Zach Russell a year later have led me to defrost my keyboard). Here in 2025, Irish singer-songwriter Dove Ellis’s debut album, appropriately titled Blizzard, is, from tip to tail, one of the most gorgeous pieces of music I’ve heard this year.

Ellis gained acclaim this fall while opening for all-world indie band Geese, and while the two artists’ styles are fairly complementary, Ellis (who produced Blizzard) and his small group of gifted musicians shade their sound more toward a folky, occasionally pensive mood, preferring scrapes of strings and bleating saxes over the (somewhat) more traditional guitar-y tones of his tourmates. Lead track “Little Left Hope” rests its sonic fate on that cello-and-sax combo, along with unexpectedly Queen-like harmonies, as Ellis searches for a bit of honesty – “Now everybody be here in the room/Now is the fake/The real is the word.” “Pale Song” is a slice of strummed electric jangle that takes on self-deception – “A past is like a sign/A sign it never talks/A sign you think you’ve lived/But it’s just stone with a little chalk.”

Even with its occasional dream-like state, Blizzard is, lyrically, a firm shake to the shoulders, trading in false bliss for often-harsh reality. “To The Sandals” is an acoustic-and-sax reverie on a short, failed marriage – “So take the words of your tragic fight/And dance them down to that new club.” “When You Tie Your Hair Up” begins quietly enough as Ellis considers the pain of keeping someone in his life, even though they’re no longer his reason for living – “Sometimes when I stand back/I just fool myself and blind my watchful eye” – before building to a crashing finish. And “Love Is,” after a somber piano intro, is a bouncy reminder of what love is and isn’t – specifically, “not the antidote to all your problems.” Somehow, this 22-year-old has wisdom far beyond his years, along with an unbelievably poetic ability to beautifully convey it.

Song I Can’t Wait to Hear Live: “Love Is” – After telling you what love is not, Ellis also shares the amount of pure, dumb luck that leads to love. Oh, but how imperative that good fortune is – “Love is/A fatal chance/A mortal chance/Your last chance.” It’s unshakably honest, and that’s what makes it one of the best songs of the year.