Mel Blue - Sanctuary Point (2023)

Swolsen’s is one of the earliest songs we wrote for Mel Blue, but it deals with themes that are ongoing for Oscar and I. Lyrically, the track looks at the difficulty of being alone with your thoughts when there is unresolved tension in your life. Especially when the tension is pressing, seems unresolvable, or at least requires an action you don’t yet have the courage to take. Although at some point you’re going to have to make a call, for the time being you need people around you. Even if that’s just to fill the air with a conversation about nothing.

“Swolsen” is a nickname Oscar gave to our drummer, Jacob Siles, and the lyrics run like a stream of consciousness around a night at “Swolsen’s House”. Oscar had returned from overseas where he was with his girlfriend, and was now dealing with the fallout of being in a long distance situation once again. For better or worse, this party offered Oscar a chance to escape. A chance to talk “just to talk and not be solo”.

We spent many years rehearsing in Jacob’s room, so it is all the more special that recordings that were made in his house have made it onto the production of this song. Jack Janis, our keyboard player, recorded the Rhodes part during a rehearsal in Jacob’s bedroom. There’s also the main sample, which is heard in the intro, chorus, and bridge of the song. This is a voice memo of a bunch of our friends singing during a house party at Jacob’s.

Capturing a sense of time and place is such a foundational part of our music making, and the way this is so explicit in Swolsen’s helped us to realise that.