Filed under: Music
In a world obsessed with ironically appropriating the past, how do you go about making fresh, sincere and authentic music? Something that makes you forget about everything other than the sounds and words reaching your ears?
How? I don’t know. But Paddy Mann has done it with the new Grand Salvo album, “Death”. This exquisite “storybook” is without a doubt the Australian album of the year. In fact, it’s the best album I’ve heard in many years, period. It is not easy to make an album like this – and not just because the songs and arrangements are complex. The biggest feat that Mann has pulled off here (in a project that took over three years to finish) is to make music that is fully an expression of the poetry that he has written. The fragmented, achronological story of a Rat, a Rabbit, a Bear, a Bird and a Man, their trials, tribulations, love for one another, and eventual deaths, leaps out of the speakers and you feel like these characters are running, flying, hunting, and dying all around you. It’s been a while since a song has made me cry – I think the last one might have been “XO” by Elliot Smith – but that’s what the track “Bird” from this album did to me the other day as I was listening to it for the umpteenth time.
The key to this album’s success could be called “naivety” if Mann’s hand wasn’t so steady, so sure and determined. I think it might be better to call it “innocence” – but not one that comes out of ignorance. There is a weary, wary, loving, youthful innocence here. It’s not Indie, it’s not Hippy, it’s not ironic, it’s not self-indulgent, it’s not referencing anyone. it’s just fucking amazing.
