halcyon-days

After a one-year long wait, Ellie Goulding is preparing to wrap the “Halcyon” era with the re-release of her sophomore album, now repackaged as “Halcyon Days” which includes a whole new album’s worth of bonus tracks sure to please Ellie Goulding fans across the universe.

The EQ Music team was lucky enough to get an early download of “Halcyon Days” for review, and let’s just say, some of us have spent hours listening to the record non-stop. To say we are loving it is an understatement! If you still can’t get enough of the opus that was “Halcyon”, then you’re ears will be glued to your iBuds with “Halcyon Days” and it’s incredible bonus tracks.

With this re-packaged masterpiece of extra tracks, “Halcyon Days” first hot dropper is the UK #1 single “Burn” – a grand running start for this new more upbeat set of additional tracks. The “Halcyon” post-break up melodies are fewer on this set of bonus tracks, making the repackaged sound more fun and radio friendly. I mean, “Goodness Gracious” – track 20 on the album – is pretty much like “Anything Could Happen 2.0”.

“You My Everything” is one of the standout tracks for me. This electronic power ballad was solely made for Ellie to sing and y’know, it could quite easily be a perfect soundtrack pick to “The Perks of Being A Wallflower” (I just love that movie). Just imagine that when you listen to the song.

One of the mid-tempo songs of the re-release “Hearts Without Chains” is, I am sorry to say, the only let-down on the record for me. The bonus tracks are quite literally making you exclaim “I want more of this good shit” to just quickly drop this ballad in the middle of the bonus tracklisting. Perhaps it would have been better placed as the last song on the repackaging.

Freedom anthem, “Stay Awake” is up next. This track was produced by 19-year old french genius Madeon and is is most definitely a strong highlight of the album for me. I might also add that Madeon has also been working with Lady Gaga on “ARTPOP”.

With “Flashlight” featuring DJ Fresh, you’ll quickly learn why this song will be a new fan favourite. Think of this song as if “You My Everything” and “Hearts Without Chains” were to be mashed up, then this would be the amazing result.

And to finish off this era of post-break up romanticism, Ellie combo-breaks this new set of songs with “How Long Will I Love You”. Hopeless romantic much? Who cares! This is one more reason to love Ellie and her bonus tracks on “Halcyon Days”.

As always, expect Ellie’s vocals to be perfectly on-point, giving you that irresistible happy-feeling you’ll immediately get after listening to this completely thought-out, heart-felt, emotional roller coaster that is the explosively perfect body of work this is “Halcyon Days”.

“Halcyon Days” drops on August 26th.