Golden Greatness!  I feel this feeling on the Vline train and thankyou for writing this song to put a voice to it.

‘In the water’ is the first glimpse at Sea Glass, the eagerly awaited new album from esteemed Melbourne artist Grand Salvo. Sea Glass is out October 5 on Mistletone via Inertia. Pre-order vinyl/CD here: www.mistletone.net/grandsalvo

The first excerpt from Sea Glass is a baroque-folk rumination on memory, loss, the passing of time and death: “Oh say you love me before I go / will you remember me when I’m gone”. Someone walks slowly along the beach, though it soon becomes apparent that this is a beach of dreams, where everything is allegory and symbol. “I wander slowly along the shore / the tide is high and the sun is low”; a childlike attempt to articulate the endless flow of time. 

Paddy Mann has made six albums under the Grand Salvo moniker: (1642-1727), River Road in 2002, Temporal Wheel in 2005, Death in 2008, Soil Creatures in 2009 and Slay Me In My Sleep in 2012. His songs can be both sparse and heavily orchestrated, with each album focused on a particular idea or theme. Death was a story-book affair, with narration and intricate programmatic arrangements; Slay Me In My Sleep, an ambitious narrative-based song cycle co-produced with Nils Frahm, was shortlisted for the Australian Music Prize. All Grand Salvo’s albums have received lavish critical acclaim, winning Album of the Week on RRR (twice), Radio National, PBS, RTR and 4ZZZ. 

Sea Glass is Grand Salvo’s seventh album, and his Mistletone debut. This richly allegorical album explores how a single, vivid memory can shape who we are; resurfacing and altering our thoughts and recollections as the years go by. The album’s very structure is an approximation of how such a memory is forged; each song radiates out from a seed memory which unfolds like a lotus jewel in Field of Flowers, the second-last song and the only “straight” narrative song of this remarkable album. The album then closes with Standing On The Sea, a dreamlike journey on the beach that uncovers “a shard of sand smoothed emerald glass / and a change in the light”, layering the dreams of childhood and the memories of adulthood into a woozy contemplation of eternity and the cyclic, ever evolving nature of memory.

Sea Glass was recorded using a number of non-western instruments including qanun (Persian dulcimer), kora (African harp), koto (Japanese stringed instrument) and Indian percussion, with a heady female chorus (Laura Jean, Lisa Salvo, Hannah Cameron, Michelle Surowiec) reprised throughout the album, woven through the narrative like a recurring dream.

Grand Salvo has performed throughout Australia and internationally, making appearances in London, New York, Barcelona, Berlin, Paris and throughout Japan. He has shared stages with artists such as Fleet Foxes, Joanna Newsom, Bill Callahan and Sharon Van Etten, and has produced and arranged live shows with up to 25 musicians at Melba Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre and The Arts Centre Victoria. His collaborations include Daughters Fever (2015) with Peter Knight, Curious Animals (2016) with baroque violinist Lizzy Welsh and Tamara Saulwick’s Helpmann award-nominated theatrical work Endings (2015).

Sea Glass

Grand Salvo - In The Water

We wrote and recorded this song in that strange and small bridge of time between the end of one year, and the start of another.

The train of 2018 has gone.
Past the silos, where all that old sadness seeped into the ground. 
Can still feel it every time the train rolls by. 
Water flows out into the bay, as it always has. 
We cross over the bridges, over rivers and creeks, on Church Street, on Punt Road, on Arden Street, on Dynon Road, and there are those silos again, in Brunswick, Collingwood, Richmond, Kensington, standing on the horizon.

Lyrics:
Silos on the hill, by the railway line
Where I used to cry,
River of my tears
Wash into the bay,
Now my eyes are dry
(But I still …)

Silos on the hill, while you’re standing still
My whole life rolls by
What is it you hold? Granular and gold
(All our dreams and lies).

And I still remember that old sadness 
When I pass by this way
It seeped into the ground
And now my feelings remain.

Silos on the hill, I turn to the south,
To the river mouth
Where the water flows
Over shell and bone,
My whole life rolls by.

And I still remember that old sadness 
When I pass by this way
It seeped into the ground
And now those feelings remain...

Silos On The Hill

Lockdown was a strange, long and sometimes lonely journey. This project bought lots of old friends back in touch, and making music together again. Another thing to be thankful for as our city gets back on her feet after the quietest of winters.

Silos On The Hill

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