Ella Thompson – Triumph & Sadness (Vinyl)

Ella Thompson is standing up for feeling. Standing up for joy and pain and all the messy, confusing, beautiful details that make life worth living. Soulful and timeless, her songs tell stories of the heart, finding universal truths in the honesty of personal experience.

Released on UK label Mr Bongo and College of Knowledge in Australia and New Zealand, Triumph & Sadness is her most profound album yet – a powerful and unique record inspired by a classic sweet soul sound and rooted in the contemporary moment. Reaching out with vulnerability and poise, it is a plea for connection in a world gone numb.

Recorded over four fruitful days at an all-analogue studio in the stunning natural surroundings of rural Victoria (with additional sessions for horns vocals and overdubs at Sound Park in Northcote), Triumph & Sadness was cut direct-to-tape with all the urgency and warmth of the iconic ‘60s and ‘70s sessions that first inspired her. Written alongside Liam McGorry (Temporary Blessings), featuring collaborators from bands Surprise Chef and Karate Boogaloo and mixed by Daptone and The Womack Sisters collaborator Wayne Gordon, it captures the live energy of a band at the top of their game.

Because it is through Melbourne’s vibrant, supportive independent scene that Thompson has found her voice. Coming up alongside contemporaries like Hiatus Kaiyote, two solo releases followed in quick succession, the 7-track EP ‘Domino’ in 2023, and LP Ripple on the Wing in 2024, pushing the boundaries of the song form and immersing herself in studio production, while building a creative community that has in turn shaped her sound.

Inspired by Australian soul singer Renée Geyer, who blazed a trail across the country in the 1970s, and a wide tapestry of influences from soul titans like Nina Simone and Curtis Mayfield, to the philosophical musings of Patti Smith, Alice Walker and Simone Weil, Thompson takes the listener by the heart and hand across the album’s 10 shimmering songs.

Her belief in the significance of connection shines through on the album’s thematic centrepiece, ‘Promise To Keep’. It is a track that feels at once profound and whimsical in the best possible way, about building nerve, embracing naivety, bravery and love in an act that Thompson likens to a renewed romanticism.

Then there is ‘Change of Heart’, which reflects on the temporality, impermanence and synchronicity of a moment, and the bittersweet paradox where everything contains its opposite: absence and presence, innocence and experience, triumph and sadness. Musically, it unfolds as a down-tempo, slinky ballad with falsetto vocals, ending in triumphant horns that signal the release of letting go. Drawing on the group vocal arrangements of bands like The Royalettes, it is devastating in its simplicity.

And so, from ‘My Weakness’, which draws on the myth of Narcissus to question the loops of recognition and unsated longing built into life under Capitalism, to the bubbling intensity of ‘Dandelion’ whose contradiction between bitter taste and beautiful flower inspires Thompson to ask what we fear by caring too much, Triumph & Sadness weaves together threads that speak of life’s great challenges. It is a complete and compelling statement from an artist ready to connect with a global audience for the first time.