The Indie Grid, Haunting Times review: 3 November 2026

“Ultimately, ‘Haunting Times’ is a record about what happens when the world stops feeling entirely trustworthy. Across its ten tracks, Scottish singer-songwriter and composer David Ell uses dreams, nightmares and altered memories as a way of exploring anxiety, division and the increasingly unstable boundary between reality and perception……David Ell isn’t trying to provide easy answers about fear, reality or the strange world we have inherited. He’s far more focused on what happens when we wake up inside the uncertainty and decide to keep moving anyway.”

For full article, click on the link:

https://theindiegrid.co.uk/power-pop/haunting-times-david-ell-letting-reality-fracture/

Extravafrench, Haunting Times review: 2 November 2026

"After traversing nightmares, omens, fear, and confrontation, the ascent feels less like a victory than a shift in perspective. We don't necessarily leave behind the world that was unsettling at the beginning of the album; we simply learn to see it from a different vantage point.
This progression gives Haunting Times a coherence that goes far beyond a simple collection of tracks. Recorded remotely and at Chamber Studio in Edinburgh, this fourth album by David Ell extends some of the questions already present in Welcome to the Ball , where masks and identity served as a common thread. Here, masks have given way to dreams, but the questioning remains similar: how do we understand what we become when the outside world begins to alter our own perception of ourselves?
The musical writing constantly reflects this hesitation between inner and outer worlds. Guitars can take center stage before giving way to more stripped-down acoustic passages; the cinematic textures sometimes give the impression that the tracks transcend their own format to become mental sequences. This blend of alternative rock, prog, and art rock allows Ell to evolve the album's sound in tandem with its underlying psychology.
Haunting Times is aptly named because nothing simply disappears. Childhood returns, fears resurface, the past insists, the present is distorted. But David Ell refuses to remain trapped in this haunted house. The ten tracks gradually shift the focus: at first, it's about understanding what haunts us; at the end, it's about knowing what we decide to do with it. And daylight, despite everything, finally breaks through."

For full article, click on the link:

https://extravafrench.com/2026/11/02/david-ell-ouvre-la-porte-des-cauchemars-sur-haunting-times/

Revista Soundloop, Haunting Times review: 31 October 2026

"One of the greatest strengths of Haunting Times is the way David Ell manages to shift personal concerns onto society. Nightmares, ghosts, and images of destruction are not reduced to metaphors for individual suffering, but rather take on a social and political dimension that challenges the present. Loss of identity, manipulation, fear, and indifference are different expressions of a reality moving toward its own fracture. The album thus has a defined conceptual direction and manages to create a dialogue between its songs. The artist observes the contradictions, questions them, and acknowledges their consequences.

Haunting Times invites us to distrust prefabricated truths, to not remain indifferent, and to understand that passivity also has consequences. Awakening means recognizing our responsibility for what happens when we open our eyes, regaining our critical capacity regarding what is happening in the world. We must stop merely observing the fall and begin to do something to prevent it."

For full article, click on the link:

https://www.revistasoundloop.com/2026/10/david-ell-haunting-times.html

 Indie Band Guru, Welcome to the Ball album review
“a full sonic experience….” 
For full review click on the link:
David Ell review
 

The Even Ground Welcome to the Ball album review
"a big screen cinematic emotional explosion of an album" 

"packed to the gills with musical ideas"
 
"David Ell has a clear musical vision in mind, and can push the catharsis to a frenzied explosion" 
 
"Atmospheric, poetic, gentle Goth tinged post-punk meets a kind of vaudevillian sensibility, a steely music hall vibe for end times" 

Skope, Welcome to the Ball album review

"David Ell’s Welcome to the Ball is a cool confident catchy pop confection. "
"Reminiscent of early 90s Brit-pop like Blur’s best."
"Rhythms glide by on the luxurious Don’t Know which sounds like a long-lost Duran Duran song" 
"the piece, Flatline.... Downright beautiful the piece has a dreamy, dramatic feel to it." 
 
David Ell’s album Dance of the Furies features in NBT Music Radio's top 100 albums and tracks of the year (2012).

Click on the links for full review listings: 

Review 1 Review 2
  

David Sinclair, Times music critic reviewing David Ell song Reach (from Welcome to the Ball)

"....dark, dramatic and atmospheric. "I close my eyes and I'm floating in the clouds, I'm drifting in the sea", he sings as the music swirls around him in growing waves of electro-orchestral sound, and a sense of agitated desperation gradually engulfs him. "Angry voices close in on me so I start to run, run, run....The pain it comes, comes, comes". They could use this as a soundtrack for one of those Scandinavian TV murder-thrillers. With its deep sense of mystery and foreboding, this is music with real character...."
 

Is this Music, 2008, reviewing David Ell debut album Wreckingball
"....big big sound....."

" lush and full..."

"....compares favourably to great songwriters like U2 and Radiohead...."

" For raw heart on the sleeve pop, look no further." 
 
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