Announcing second EP ‘Now Leaving West Feldwood,’ the new single wraps Bleach touchstones around a study of ‘nothing.’

‘Whole Lotta Nothing’ strikes one immediately as a defining Ellie Bleach song, though it cannibalises even older song styles than those 70s ballads referenced on debut EP ‘No Elegant Way to Sell Out.’

Opening the song, a list of fragments from an one night stand centres around the word “nothing.” The bedroom, the boy, all dead as museum exhibits. “Nothing” forms a lyrical hook, its repetition and mutation in syntax reminiscent of Patsy Cline songs (‘Heartaches,’ ‘She’s Got You’ and ‘He Called Me Baby’) – though I’m not sure the phrase “Hot or Not” ever came up in any of Cline’s songs. Our character feels “nothing” and sees herself enveloped “in the nothing.” The crushing sadness of it all is numbed by the irresistible sweetness of the sound and delivery (see again Patsy Cline)… there’s even a sax solo halfway through!

Yet where we are used to this kind of solo guiding a ballad out to its close, or building to a desultory repeat chorus, Bleach uses this as the jumping off point to dramatically transform the tone. Suddenly, spiking between orchestral stabs, the lyrics mingle a realistic kitchen party makeout scene with a more fantastic cocaine-fuelled orgy in an orchestra pit. Here, the depths of nothing foreshorten in one knowingly hedonistic scene: “If you’re looking for catharsis, my darling this is it.” All this comes before Bleach finally reveals the source of the nothing that we may have suspected all along (see again Patsy Cline), that, “Nothing compares how you held me.”

Announcing Bleach’s second EP, ‘Now Leaving West Feldwood,’ it is a familiarly vivid character study, part of a collection that promises to dig deeper into a form she does so well. Collaging timeless reference points with a modern instinct and enlivening them with contemporary lyrical details, ‘Whole Lotta Nothing’ captures Ellie Bleach at her best.