One of our tips for 2012 Saint Saviour has finally announced details of her debut album Union which is released June 25TH on Surface Area Listen to the track ‘Fight’ from the album http://soundcloud.com/saintsaviour/05-fight-1/
As Saint Saviour, Becky Jones has trodden an unconventional and uncompromising path towards artistic salvation. It hasn’t always been easy. It’s a story that stretches from the workhouses of Dickensian London to the arena house concerts across the globe. But throughout it all, and with her spectral and hypnotic debut album, she may just have emerged as one of the defining solo artists of her time.
Perhaps best known until now as co-writer and de facto front woman for Groove Armada, Stock-on-Tees born Jones took her traditional music background and harnessed it to a burgeoning love of electro and production skills inspired by the works of Factory Records and the seminal producer Martin Hannett.
Uniquely crowd-funded through PledgeMusic Union – released on Surface Area in June – has one foot in the proud lineage of female electric pioneers like MIA and Robyn, the other pulling along the line of classic songwriting like Scott Walker and Carole King. It is by turns bewitching, challenging and delightful, as Becky’s dancing soprano twists and turns around a collection of songs, both electronic and organic entirely written, A&Red, produced and performed by herself.
While she has always vowed to never write from a personal romantic perspective, the music is unquestionably raw and keenly felt. “I never ever write about my own experience, my family life or relationships. I’m not really interested in badgering on about my own life, I’d rather write about daydreams and the news, stuff that’s important rather than being self-indulgent.”
Fallen Trees is concerned with global warming where Becky “wonders if we are designed to destroy ourselves or whether someone will come and make the world work properly.” Other times, she is inspired by history and her surroundings. On the gorgeous, spectral Reasons, she contemplates the history of her surroundings in central London, having delved into a local cemetery used as a pauper’s grave for prostitutes in Dickensian times. The song concerns “imagining being one of these prostitutes, looking through the window of a workhouse, knowing that your child’s in there and you have to get them out. Everyone thinks it’s a love song, but it’s actually about something horrible!” Even her nom de plume came from that very workhouse, Saint Saviour’s.
I Call This Home – which deals with the “complicated relationship you have with your roots and when you try to escape them” – sees insidious drums piling over a shimmering backdrop and building to a heady sense of transcendence. The Rain Falls On The Just mines the best traditions of early Eurythmics to power its moral soul-searching . Elsewhere on the album, the propulsive Domino – about “surviving the production line of pop” drops angelic vocals over plucked, dancing strings before Ampllify Dot pierces the reflection with an aggressive rap. On the Mazzy Star-ish Mercy it’s Becky’s gentle soprano that does the piercing with Fight proof of Becky’s mastery of the most classic songwriting.
This songwriting is teamed with compelling live performances – extravagant, theatrical costumes, projections and set ups and a visceral stage persona. UK audiences will get an opportunity to see Union showcased a number of shows currently being lined up for the summer.
The debut single I Call This Home will also be available from June 25th.
To support her global release plans Saint Saviour has entered into a ground breaking music partnership deal with AEG Live (UK). The deal will see AEG Live take the place of the traditional label by providing the funding required for the album release, in return for exclusive global Live touring rights and a 360 degree share of music revenues.
