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Sivu - Wild Horse Running (2023)

Sivu - Wild Horse Running (2023)

BAND/ARTIST: Sivu

James Page had always taken breaks between releasing music under his Sivu singer-songwriter alias. But by 2018 he needed more than that. He was burnt out. After signing with Atlantic and releasing his debut, Something On High, in 2014, Page took the record on the road, garnering critical acclaim and comparisons to everyone from Richard Hawley to Wild Beasts. The dream, it seemed, was becoming real. But his time with the label wasn’t to be. Ties were cut, and Page retreated to the studio, feeling a little bitten. He worked intermittently on a follow-up, 2017’s Sweet Sweet Silent, with long-time producer Charlie Andrew (the Brit-winning, Grammy-nominated producer responsible for the tender, soaring styles of Alt-J and Marika Hackman), chronicling his experience of hearing loss – Page has Ménière's disease – over strings and soft piano. He toured some more. And then he thought he’d had enough. He retreated to sleepy Cambridgeshire, stowed his guitar, and switched his focus. He started a family and settled into a different pace of life, content to wait and see if the songwriting urges that had commanded his life to that point would return. For a year or so, they didn’t. The guitar gathered dust. He noodled on his computer, experimenting with new ways of writing. But it wasn’t until the strange, elongated days of COVID-19 lockdowns — and experimenting with the odd live stream — that something more solid began to take shape. A chance call from Charlie Andrew would provide a crack for the light to pour in, and new shoots to sprout. A check-in from a previous manager and new connections with academics researching hearing loss added impetus — restoring a confidence that had wavered since encountering the music industry’s uglier side. Poaching slots between Andrew’s studio bookings, the pair worked up what Page had been writing over lockdown, then sketched out and recorded new material in fits and spurts. After wanting, Page admits now, to give up the ghost entirely, he’s ended up with an album — titled Wild Horse Running, 10 tracks in all — that feels like his truest work yet. With Andrew as confidant, and the space to just create, a new, more direct approach to writing grew. Page would build ideas on his laptop, filling spaces with lyrics that were suddenly rawer and more direct. “I used to kind of dress up lyrics a little bit and maybe try and make these whimsical ways of phrasing things. But now, that’s changed: I’m fine just laying it down,” says Page. Part of that has come from throwing off a more methodical way of working and instead writing in a way that Page, now 34, says feels more “organic.” Opening a laptop, rather than drawing for the same familiar chords on his guitar, and ensconcing himself in a wash of Hot Chip, SBTRKT, and Beck ushered on a new creative maturity. Music felt good again. It started with ‘Apollo’. “It felt like a step forward,” says Page. With a smart, slinky bassline, suspenseful hats, and hooky vocals, it provides one of the most direct, immediate moments on the album. “It was the first song we did in the studio and so it felt like a blueprint for what the record was going to be.” What followed came naturally. Page traces complex desire over delicate piano on the poignant ‘Morning Sings’, harmonises with his own echo on the gently-plucked ‘Afterglow’, and channels Thom Yorke over the paranoid synths of ‘Spilt Milk’. It’s a record shot through with disarming honesty; Page’s voice delivers a bold tenderness in stiff falsetto. ‘Choral Light’ is cinematic dance-pop; ‘Wild Horse Running’ is ready to be sung en masse to the rafters. Better still, Page is able to take his time when it comes to sharing his new music with the world. Having seen the teeth of the major label ecosystem, he’s more comfortable operating independently (the album, as with Sweet Sweet Silent, will come via Andrew’s Square Leg Records). “I think, being an artist, when you go into those kinds of rooms, you lose yourself along the way because there’s all these people’s opinions on what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.” Live plans are nascent. Page wants to do small, select shows, so that each one feels intimate and special — a place where real connections are being made. That approach will go into putting a band together too, while Page figures out how to stride in his new role, manning keyboards and samplers as well as his familiar six-string. Wild Horse Running, then, is the sound of a re-emerging talent returning to himself, restoking the coals, and capturing the array of sparks.

Tracklist:
1.01 - Sivu - Wild Horse Running (4:16)
1.02 - Sivu - Overtime Lover (3:35)
1.03 - Sivu - Apollo (3:22)
1.04 - Sivu - Spilt Milk (3:56)
1.05 - Sivu - Morning Sings (3:56)
1.06 - Sivu - Constant Flux (4:16)
1.07 - Sivu - Afterglow (3:58)
1.08 - Sivu - Choral Light (3:44)
1.09 - Sivu - Felt (2:09)
1.10 - Sivu - There Goes Life (5:03)



Year 2023 | Folk | Alternative | Indie | FLAC / APE | Mp3

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  • whiskers
  •  wrote in 13:04
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