NIck Saunders
Resonance, 9th October2006, Digital Wings CD Cat No: IEGDWCD1
Nick Saunders is a man of rare gifts: a haunting and mellifluous voice that seems to channel the spirit of Nick Drake while possessing the warmth of James Taylor; the storytelling ability of a folk troubadour, married to a melodic and concise Tin Pan Alley sensibility. Nick's début, Resonance, is a truly spellbinding collection of songs and an incredible introduction to a new artist.
An intuitive acoustic guitarist, Nick uses a variety of alternative tunings to colour his work, resulting in unusual chord voicings and otherworldly sounds and textures. The title track opens the album and emphasises the fluid symbiosis between Nick’s voice and guitar. Indeed, the entire album was recorded with Nick performing guitar and vocals simultaneously.
The recurring motifs on Resonance are primarily devices for communication (televisions, satellites, radios, typewriters), ironically juxtaposed with themes of isolation. Nowhere on the album is this idea better exemplified than in the song 'Lost', “a song of urban alienation where ordinary city elements only seem to underline a desperate loneliness,” relates the singer-songwriter.
The urban and the pastoral make compelling bedfellows in Nick's music. 'Descending' captures a yearning to escape the monotony of the daily grind and retreat to, in Saunders' words, “some sort of Samuel Palmer-esque rural idyll.”
Lyrically, the emphasis is on the wistful, the nostalgic and the melancholic. This is exemplified in tracks like ‘Toffee Apples’ and ‘Book Thieving’, the latter based on a boyhood acquaintance of Nick’s who used to steal books to order. Childhood memories also provide elliptical, dreamlike scenarios in his work.
When asked about the song ‘Fly’, Nick laughs: “I set out with the intention of writing a more upbeat, happy song. By the time I’d finished it was about a boy who got run over by a train. When you are young, much of the world is a complete mystery and the most ordinary places can become imbued with a special magic that makes them live in the memory forever.”
As well as drawing upon the evergreen canons of songwriters such as Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Webb, Joni Mitchell and Paul Buchanan, Nick derives much inspiration from the fields of art, literature and cinema. He cites Nick Roeg's 'Walkabout' as an all-time favourite film, it's central plot correlating with the album's recurring themes of (sometimes self-imposed) isolation.
Working in collaboration with producer/arranger Simon Barber, the record took shape over an 18-month period of stolen summers. During recording, no little care was taken; vocal/guitar sessions took place at Liverpool’s Motor Museum studio with Mike Crossey (Arctic Monkeys, The Zutons) whilst the remaining sessions took place at Simon’s loft studio, Through A Glass Darkly, hidden away in the leafy suburbs of Liverpool.
Before moving to his current beach-side home in Devon, Nick spent fourteen years in Liverpool, where he became one of the founding contributors to the Acoustic Engine songwriter collective, frequented by talents such as Howie Payne, Steve Roberts, Peter Coyle, Tom Hingley and Andy White. An early demo of Nick's was plucked for inclusion on Viper Records' The Great Liverpool Acoustic Experiment and was singled out for praise as one of the album's gems by Record Collector magazine. As a result, he signed to independent label Digital Wings in 2005.
Live:
Aug 30 London, The Troubadour
Sep 17 St Albans, Blue Angel Acoustic Café
Oct 22 - Liverpool, Acoustic Club @ Zanzibar
Oct 24 - London, The Acoustic Lounge
Oct 25 - London, Monkey Chews
Oct 26 - London, The Troubadour
Oct 28 - Liverpool, View Two Gallery
Oct 30 - Manchester (ITC), Electro Acoustic Club @ Britons Protection (ALBUM LAUNCH)
Nov 09 - London, The Slaughtered Lamb
Nov 18 - Hove, Sanctuary Cafe
Nov 25 - Cambridge, The Boathouse
Dec 03 - Birmingham, Adam & Eve
Jan 25 - Portsmouth, The Barn
Feb 23 - Essex, High Barn
For more information please see www.nicksaunders.co.uk / www.digitalwings.co.uk. For national press please contact Clare McGrattan at Piranha PR on 07968 379 355 or e-mail clare@piranha-pr.co.uk
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