So So Gay
You’d be forgiven for not having heard of Saint Saviour. However, many of you will undoubtedly have heard her voice at some point. The elf-like singer-songwriter has provided vocals and songwriting for Groove Armada’s Grammy-nominated Black Light. Now, having already released two EPs, Saint Saviour is launching her debut solo album Union on 25 June 2012.
Preceding the album is lead single, ‘I Call This Home’ and quite frankly, it’s really rather wonderful. The track opens with an ethereal electric guitar before your ears are assaulted by the sheer force of Saint Saviour’s voice. Your immediate thought as you listen through the first verse and chorus will undoubtedly be that the singer’s otherworldly vocals bear an uncanny resemblance to Kate Bush. This parallel is at its most stark when the singer reaches for the high notes and shoots a shiver down the spine.
Indeed, ‘I Call This Home’ reeks of 21st-Century The Kick Inside, with its guitar-infused electro vibe and its wild yet controlled delivery. Thematically, the track appears to be an ode to becoming used to being alone, to never quite being settled in life; ‘I call this home / But it’s nothing for me / That’s the love, that’s that’s the love / It’s in chains’. Naturally, Saint Saviour (aka Becky Jones)’s melodramatic voice lends itself perfectly to this sort of soul-searching lyrical content.
The moment where the first chorus leads into the second verse via what almost sounds like rising steam before the pulsating beat kicks in is particularly climactic. Perhaps a tad too climactic for so early in the track, as the song then struggles to peak and meanders along pleasantly, but striking at nothing like it again from that moment onwards.
Overall, ‘I Call This Home’ is a promising snippet of what is to come from this massively talented artist’s debut album. Unfortunately, it isn’t quite as tantalising as some of the material on the EPs Suukei and Anatomy (if you download nothing else this month, make sure it’s ‘Red Sun’) but we are confident that Union will be one of the musical highlights of So So Gay’s musical year.
Download the track from Amazon or iTunes.
http://soundcloud.com/saintsaviour/i-call-this-home-1
