le blog pastallconcerns

Sometimes, being bored senseless and spending long idle hours browsing the Internet, looking out for great new outfits you’ve never heard of, what record to expect from your favourite bands or just clicking randomly here and there can work wonders. Especially when you end up stumbling on the page of a band you had never heard of before, whose sound immediately grabs your attention and never lets go of it, and whose record you can download for free. It feels even better when the thrill of having discovered this band doesn’t wear off after a few listens, and you suddenly discover that you have been listening to it on and off for a whole year.

This is exactly the kind of feeling you would have felt if you had stumbled upon Saw’s webpage a year ago – unfortunately, their record is no longer available for free download, which in a way may be a good thing, as it may mean they have eventually got a proper record deal. Saw was a French-based duo who have now moved away to Sweden, a place where their refined, exquisitely chiseled folk might be met with less indifference than France, where the indie community can sometimes seem to be surprisingly deaf to beautiful, soulful music.

At first glance, Saw sound pretty much like many Nick Drake-influenced outfits, such as Jose Gonzalez, Gravenhurst or to a lesser extent, Vetiver on their first record. As a matter of fact, both Samuel Wulgue’s brilliant and always inventive guitar playing and warm voice bear close resemblance to Nick Drake, especially on songs such as Until I Fall or Controlling My Fear. Like Nick Drake’s songs, Saw’s tunes are of a staggering beauty, haunting and delicate, complimented with very few arrangements – some Rhodes on most of the song, barely audible and stripped to the bone percussions, a female voice (Annak Andersonn’s) on a few tracks -, and would undoubtedly sound good played next to a fireside on a cold snowy winter night. They have got the same feeling of immediate intimacy which made and still makes Nick Drake’s music so appealing and comforting.

However, Saw’s music harks back more to the disturbed Nick Drake who sang “Black Eyed Dog” than the peaceful, bucolic troubadour of “Pink Moon”. Saw’s music is beautiful but never cute – except perhaps on Hiding In Corners -.and you can sense a feeling of emergency and fear which pervades most of the songs, as is particularly blatant in Controlling My Fear where singer Samuel reckons that doing so “is not so easy when you’re not here”, while he tells us that “the wind is blowing in the wrong direction” in It’s Hard To See. The future looks puzzling and ominous, as he sings “Maybe we’ll never be the same” on Changing Time, and begs his lover to make him “feel wonderful and loved tonight”, thereby stressing out how easily things can go astray.