TRACK REVIEW: Ernie – Awfully Strange

Songwriter Joe Earnest Allen, the ‘Ernie’ in this particular project, has a prolific output. It feels like the stories he tells in song are pouring out of him and each successive release adds more colour and character to his musical world.

Awfully Strange is a nostalgia-tinged tale of wayward drunken antics, youthful misadventures tempered with regret, both in song/dream form and maybe given the passage of time too. The sweeping slide guitar and lush strings wrap the song into that rose-tinted, half-remembered holiday gauze and as it builds the song’s rousing finale powers home with bells clanging. You can definitely hear how he earned his recent Sam Fender support and recently signed with EMI/Gravity when he has so much to offer.