ELI is a London singer-songwriter whose voice first stopped strangers in their tracks at St. Pancras station: a piano session of a song called 15 And Alive that went viral and never really stopped. ‘Dork Mode’ is the debut album that puts everything that moment promised onto record, and it largely delivers.

Fourteen tracks is an ambitious statement for a debut, and ELI has the songs to justify it. Drawing from Prince, The 1975 and less obvious places, the production is polished without being overworked, leaving space for the voice, which is the real instrument here, to do its work. The album deals in identity, queerness, growing up hiding, and the slow, imperfect process of not doing that anymore. It’s a lot to carry, and ELI does so without melodrama.

‘Philosophy’ sets the scene with real confidence, immediately establishing the tone of the album with an emotional missive that asks you to “enjoy the passage of time how you want” and simply be yourself. ‘Delusional’ and ‘Imagination’ keep that momentum going, building a world in which the personal and the playful coexist without either feeling like it’s undercutting the other.

The album’s centrepiece arrives in ’15 And Alive’, the song that started everything. Heard in the context of a full album, it lands differently, the viral moment now embedded in a larger story about where it began and where it’s been trying to go ever since. It’s generous of ELI to include it here rather than hold it back, and it earns its place.

‘Sundays’ is one of the album’s quieter moments, and it’s one of its most effective, as ELI lets the voice breathe over minimal arrangements, trusting the writing to do the heavy lifting. ‘Naked’ does the same with a rawness that makes you sit up and pay attention.

The final run of ‘Throw Me A Line’, ‘Not Right To Die Young’ and ‘Endings For Beginners’ closes the album with real emotional weight. ‘Not Right To Die Young’ is the kind of song that earns its title, and ‘Endings For Beginners’ is exactly the right note to end on: open, honest, and quietly hopeful.

‘Dork Mode’ is not a perfect debut; it’s a deeply human one. ELI writes with the kind of specificity that makes you feel like you’re being trusted with something real, and a voice that makes you believe every word of it.