Grand Salvo

For all intents and purposes, Grand Salvo is the work of singer-songwriter Paddy Mann. Grand Salvo’s debut album, 1642-1727, and its follow-up, River Road, earned him rave reviews and a solid following at home and beyond for his stark, sensitive and beautiful songs. After a spell living in Europe, Paddy returned to Australia and began work on another album he’d dreamt up while away, A set of songs that acts as a children’s storybook, the album became cursed with too many recording problems and Paddy decided to shelve it. While that project will eventually see the light of day, its plagued nature ironically became the motivation for The Temporal Wheel. Liberated by starting from scratch and working on impulse, Paddy holed up in Tony Dupe’s (Holly Throsby, Saddleback) tiny house-cum-studio at Saddleback Mountain on the beautiful New South Wales South Coast, recording intensively over two sessions of two days. With only a couple of songs fully formed, Paddy did much of the writing for The Temporal Wheel each morning before recording, inspired by a bare few ideas and images. These are songs for simple moments, moments that grow into revelations of transcendence. Surrounding the core interplay between Paddy’s rich, oaken voice and his acoustic guitar, his subtle and intuitive orchestral arrangements – piano, cello, horn glockenspiel, harps and various percussion – keep the easy rolling, classic feel of his songs, but also ring with sparkling creativity. The Temporal Wheel is an album of poignant emotional candour set in stunningly intimate atmospheres. It should go some way to establish Grand Salvo as a most rarefied thing. (Label info)