Album Review :: Paul Thomas Saunders - Beautiful Desolation

Paul Thomas Saunders

Beautiful Desolation

April 7 2014 (Atlantic)

9/10

Words: Linn Branson

After tempting listeners with two self-released EPs and a raft of live shows that showed this Hove-based singer/songwriter to be something of a master at his craft, his long-awaited debut album was one naturally eagerly anticipated. Written, recorded, and produced alongside bandmate Max Prior, we now finally get to delve at length into the mind and music that Saunders’ music is conducted around.

Whilst its languid sonic palette lures one into its depths, we soon discover that attempting to plumb them in completeness may well result in much travelling, both on a physical plane, as much as on one that exists beyond it, to be fully aware in understanding.

Saunders parades a falsetto pitch that unlike its deeper resonant brothers, gives an oft other-world-ish air that transcends the everyday in its ethereal and seductive approach. One only has to look at the vast majority of title tracks on this album to gather that the writer works on a different plane to most others one is likely to encounter. That the album was recorded back in the Yorkshire hills from where Saunders originated from, away from the distraction of city life may have enabled him to become totally immersed in the quietude of a world to which the listener is taken to, where nothing exists bar the sound of glacial synth pulses set amid electronic nuances. The title of the ten track work is apposite: beautiful, most certainly; 'desolation'? In its landscape of aloneness, yes. Saunders himself says inspiration came from the words used by astronaut Buzz Aldrin after having landed on the moon - and there probably isn't anywhere more desolate than that.

Opener 'Kawai Celeste', a five-minute synth-rich trajectory cut against guitars and percussion that sets the seal with its lines like, "If I could, I'd break your heart." It's love and death and pain in one whole damn song. We find here also versions of two previous songs, both from the 'Descartes Highlands' EP. ‘Santa Muerte’s Lightning & Flare’, takes us on an eight minute rollercoaster of a ride as the track dips and dives in a wasted refinement of layered vocals. 'A Lunar Veteran's Guide To Re-entry' glimmers electronically along with the beat of strident drums  and up-tempo guitar as the lyrics burrow into the mind: And she saw/Black eyes while sleeping/Lord, she saw, Jesus in clouds/All around/Forest fires were creeping/While strangers left her house"

Like many of Saunders' songs the acoustic guitar and unobtrusive synth melody of  ‘Appointment in Samarra’ takes on human relationships, the toll they take and the trail of destruction they can sometimes leave in their wake: “The blood is on your hands/the bodies on the ground around us/make no future plans/sever every bound that binds us”.  The deceptively simple, yet seductively bewitching, piano ballad 'Good Women' is a song he has described as being about "those cretins holding the hand of someone who ought to be holding your hand". A track so good, yet about such a bad lot: "Good women bed the charmless everyday/They lead the lowest to their rooms, with their eye's flawless and disarming/And he'll swear he'll be your doll this time/And those dreams you had, they'll suffer/They'll die."

'Waking & Evening Prayers For Rosemary-Mai' (marked by vocals of a quality to which many no doubt aspire to), ‘Under Atacama Stars’ And ‘Starless State Of The Moonless Barrow’ - the latter with one of the most polished, and climatic, choruses one is likely not to find bettered this year - all denote a confidence and ease of writing style and of one who has discovered his metier;  whilst new single cut 'In High Heels Burn It Down' winds its way on a graceful, measured electronic arrangement that builds through to become an anthemic piece of synth richness.

This is a quite extraordinary work as a debut. One that many artists would be honoured to take credit for. A major contender for big prizes.