New LP from Our Man in the Field

The project of British songwriter Alex Ellis, Our Man in the Field is building a fictional world where English countryside meets the fading edges of the American dream. The concept revolves around WZR2 Radio Free Silverado, a late-night radio station that exists somewhere between fiction and reality, broadcasting songs, stories and fragments of lives into the darkness. That creative idea has now grown into the beating heart of a project that brings music, storytelling and cinematic world-building into the same frame.

Over time, Alex has expanded Our Man in the Field far beyond the traditional boundaries of a band; Motel signs, endless highways, forgotten towns and the people passing through them populate an immersive universe shaped by his fascination with the lives carried behind ordinary encounters. His songwriting finds intimacy in those details, pairing close observation with expansive arrangements that feel built for a widescreen setting.

That approach has steadily mapped out Our Man in the Field as a distinctive presence within contemporary roots music. More than 150 shows over the past year have helped build that reputation through word of mouth, taking Alex from Glastonbury Festival’s Acoustic Stage to Hyde Park alongside Neil Young, with further tours alongside Chuck Prophet, The Delines and Jackson Dean. Appearances at SXSW have added another dimension to a project whose ambitions have increasingly stretched beyond the recording studio.

Those ambitions come into sharp focus on Silverado, the brand new third full-length record from Our Man in the Field. Recorded at Mark Knopfler’s British Grove Studios and produced by Guy Fletcher of Dire Straits, the record brings together an exceptional cast including Ethan Johns, Sonny Landreth, PP Arnold, Robbie McIntosh, Nick Pini, Will Fry and Fletcher himself. Across its eleven songs, timeless Americana, folk and cinematic rock provide the backdrop for Alex’s character-driven writing.

Years of touring through Britain, Europe and North America have provided a steady stream of chance encounters, conversations and observations, while journalism, literature, film and music have all fed into the album. The songs arise from moments that might otherwise disappear, turning everyday experiences into stories about memory, friendship, identity and the strange ways lives intersect.

America remains a particularly powerful backdrop, with Springsteen, Dylan and Neil Young sitting alongside the literary influence of Steinbeck and the visual worlds of Wim Wenders and William Eggleston. By not attempting to explain America, Silverado uses those influences as scenery for something more relatable, distilling the emotional connections that can form between people separated by geography, circumstance or experience.

The lead single “Wall of Sound” captures that idea through two encounters separated by thousands of miles. One began with a news interview involving a pub landlord in Doncaster facing the closure of his business; another came through a chance meeting with a truck driver in Arkansas whose circumstances had changed dramatically. Different lives, different locations, but similar feelings of frustration and disillusionment provide the song’s emotional context captured in a pop-inflected track full of soulful vocals, warm instrumentation and a breezy groove.

Tracks like “These Are The Days” take inspiration from Adam Curtis’s documentaries and their exploration of modern anxiety and the collapse of collective ideals. “Something Has Got To Be Done” draws from Jon Snow’s reporting from a children’s hospital in Gaza and a later meeting with the broadcaster in Paris, transforming those experiences into a song whose profits will be donated to War Child.

Beyond Silverado, Radio Free Silverado continues to expand through films, live sessions, visual storytelling and original broadcasts. It’s a fitting extension of Alex Ellis’s songwriting, presenting a world where every road seems to lead to another story, and every passing stranger might have one worth hearing. With UK and European dates ahead, Our Man in the Field continues to build that world one performance, song and story at a time and we can’t wait to see what comes next.

Listen to Silverado below

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