Ellis in Transit’s new Single Hands Up is hands down great!

Sometimes someone sends me a song that I have to write about. The new single “Hands Up” by Hamilton band Ellis in Transit is one of those songs. It was released yesterday and – full disclosure – I got a preview of it last week. 

Sometimes a song for one reason or another stands out to me for a few days – I just find myself humming it in the shower without realizing what it is. 

I now shower almost exclusively in the evenings. It makes no sense; it’s just the new natural flow of my working-from-home daily routine. Sorry, I just needed to tell someone that. 

Let me back up and start from the beginning – not of the shower. 

When I got a request recently to review a new song, “Hands Up” by Hamilton band Ellis in Transit. The song wasn’t out yet, so I looked them up on Spotify to see what I could find. 

I checked out the first track I found called Thousand Feet Deep. This song starts solid enough to keep listening – when the vocals break into the chorus they got my full attention. Ohh! It’s a great song. Let’s see what’s up with these guys… I sent an email to see if they would send over the new single a little early. They did.

Ellis in Transit features vocals that you can sink into by Alexandria Shankland and some serious strings by Jim Robertson, both of whom have a British-twang to their music if you will. The two artists site their influences amount artists such as The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Oasis, Wolf Alice among other acts. I can hear the meld of the British and North American influences in a lot of the stuff I took in when writing this and researching the band. 

Now, on to the single! I can’t get this one out of my head. In a good way. It could be because it similarly speaks to me as their other music does. I’m down with some dirty guitar alt-rock and some silky vocals. I think it’s a bit more than that though. This one is a bit more somber than the band’s other music and guitars remind me at points of James Calvin Wilsey’s work on Wicked Games, but then the Brit-alt-rock roars back in just at the right moment. 

I also want to touch on the vocals of Shankland – now I’m not entirely sure how these guys record or release tracks, but I’d venture a guess there was a bit of time between this track and the previous three releases. Shankland has a very cool voice and I would like to hear more of her for sure. I appreciated how much she allowed herself to experiment with her voice on this track.

There is some incredibly beautiful music brewing in these guys and I think we’ll see more evolution of sound as they grow and release more – I hope so at least. There are moments in the “Hands Up” track where I feel like I could be listening to this in a blues bar from an old movie and moments where I could be in the middle of an arena concert with a ripped tee-shirt breaking every single social distancing rule I can think of. 

You can check out the brand spanking new track by Ellis in Transit on Spotify below.

For more on Ellis in Transit check them out on Facebook here, Instagram here, and on there website here.