Today, Coco Elise, the solo project of Boorloo/Perth artist Josh Ellis, has released his debut LP, The longest bridge in the world, independently out now. LISTEN HERE + WATCH HERE + PRE-ORDER VINYL HERE.

Trimmed from twenty songs written over a single year to the ten most telling, the record circles loss and love, tests out acceptance, then backs away from it again, all running against the tyranny of love reaching the end of it’s tether. Its buoyancy is the point: Ellis spends the record telling himself the stories that help him cope, until he’s ready to let the truth seep in. Focus track ‘His bed is on the beach’ captures the deluded comfort of believing that someone’s coming back for you. Music video by Stevie Morley-Wong sees Ellis living on the beach, in a slightly different level of prestige that the subject of the song is allowed.

“I think each song tells a similar story, and these ones were specific to what I was actually going through and what was in my head at the time,” says Ellis.

WATCH: Coco Elise – His bed is on the beach (Official Video)

Avoidance is the album’s central theme, and the singles have traced its slow unravelling. ‘Sadie‘, ‘Porcelain Tiles‘, ‘Avoid Your Stare‘ and ‘Rest My Tyres‘ each lean on a disillusioned brightness that mirrors avoidance itself: pretty on the outside, until you think twice about the words. Acceptance slowly seeps in, one spiral at a time.

That tension lives in Ellis’ production. Every Coco Elise track is self-produced, built over hours of solitary experimentation with no detail left as an afterthought. Warped guitars, static-soaked vocal melodies, and small percussive prods cushion the isolation in the lyrics, while nylon strings, hand percussion, and layered guitars give each song its character, wobbling around an emotional core that never quite resolves.

“It’s easier to come up with a sound that feels distinct to you if you’re playing the instruments and building out a song the way only you know how,” says Ellis. “I spent hours in my room working on these songs on my own, so when something felt cool and new, I knew it actually was, because I’d tried so many other parts.”

The project has drawn praise from fans and industry alike from triple j, Beat Magazine, Rolling Stone Australia, VICE Australia, EARMILK and The Line of Best Fit, and has built steady momentum on national radio, with plays across Triple J Unearthed, Edge, RTR, SYN, FBI, 2SER and PBS. It has also picked up editorial playlisting across Spotify AU/NZ and Apple Music, and Ellis has previously been recognised at the Western Australian Music Awards with a nomination and win for ‘Song of the Year’.

This October, Ellis sold-out his first Eora/Sydney show at Buddy’s Bar and played a headlining show at Punters Club in his new home-town – Naarm/Melbourne. He continues on this live run supporting Jordan Rakei this December. See dates and details below.