Cab Ellis

Cab Ellis is the brain child of singer, keyboardist Connor Abeles, who surrounds himself with musicians that are often rooted in jazz. Their music is generally built on a relatively conventional pop scaffolding, but with a little sideways offset that gives it an eccentric quality. If chopped down to its ingredients, the parts that make up their songs tend to have a familiar ring, referencing some classic element of the '70s gentler pop/rock mixtures with a classic guitar solo here or a soul-inspired horn passage there. The overall effect, however, is gleefully idiosyncratic and matches nicely to the distinctive vocal delivery of Abeles, whose voice has a distinctive, turbocharged Randy Newman meets very early Genesis era Peter Gabriel quality. The band had a more overtly jazzy streak on their 2020 debut album, Nighttime OCD, though their sound got more diffuse in their subsequent records.