Chicago songwriter and guitarist James Elkington—who has collaborated with everyone from Richard Thompson to Jeff Tweedy to Tortoise—recorded his sophomore album at Wilco’s Loft, expanding upon his celebrated 2017 debut Wintres Woma as well as his recent production and arrangement work for the likes of Steve Gunn, Nap Eyes, and Joan Shelley. Casting glances back to British folk traditions as well as toward avant-garde horizons, these brilliant new songs, as accessible as they are arcane, buttress Elkington’s brisk guitar figures and baritone poesy with strings, woodwinds, and backing vocals by Tamara Lindeman of the Weather Station. Elkington moved to the United States in the late ’90s from his native England with the intention of making himself absolutely essential to the Chicago music scene. Twenty years later he’s contributed to a staggering volume of records, shows and projects both in Chicagoland (see Jeff Tweedy, Tortoise, Eleventh Dream Day, Brokeback) and far from it (see Richard Thompson, Laetitia Sadier, Michael Chapman, Steve Gunn, Joan Shelley, Nap Eyes). Wintres Woma seemed to be a logical, healthy respite from assisting with the creative needs of others that would allow him to serve his own. But as satisfaction doesn’t exist in the past tense, and the present doesn’t exist, he barreled on ahead: namely with, in the midst of everything else, composing, arranging, and recording an album that could adequately only be called one thing, Ever-Roving Eye.