Saint Saviour, the solo act of alt-pop singer Becky Jones, today releases her new single ‘Poetry’ via VLF Records, nearly three years after her last musical release.
A wistfully existential love song, ‘Poetry’, which was produced by Bill Ryder-Jones, is led by the charming, contemplative vocals of Saint Saviour, accompanied throughout by gentle acoustics that occasionally explode into a passionate buzz. ‘Poetry’ is ultimately a song about embracing the terrifying and ecstatic mystery of love, a message she wishes to impart to her children as they grasp the world around them in innocent wonder.
Speaking of the track’s origin, Saint Saviour said: “‘It’s all poetry’ is something a close friend said one day when we were discussing the bible during one of our marathon playground chats. Having no religion, this came as news to me and the seed of this idea stuck with me for ages. A text to keep chipping away at, re-interpreting, re-applying to your needs, a lifetime of wonder. The song looks at applying this same concept to life: “Little by little you’ll understand, little by little they’ll come to your hand”.”
She continues: “I’ve written this song at a time when life has been thrown into high contrast, and the biblical metaphors are suddenly more resonant. Nevertheless It’s an existential song about embracing the great mystery of love. There’s a link to Kierkegaard’s idea of ‘becoming’ which I was playing with with the chorus’s concluding line. I’m happy because it’s the closest I think I’ve ever got to a lyrically simple song about love without subverting too much. In the studio, we wondered if the song needed another verse, but I wanted to allow the listener to reflect. Bill embraced this and built this incredible explosion of noise around what was originally a sad little whistle solo. I think it communicates so beautifully without words.”
About the accompanying video, Becky said: “The video is shot around the mouth of the Tees where I grew up, a ‘Smoggie’. My grandfather brought the family from Wales in the 60’s to work in the Dorman Long Steelworks in Teesside, and in the year I was born, my dad took a job at the Seal Sands chemical plant, remaining there for 40 years on shift. He aided the long shutdown of the site as his last task before retirement.
“The footage comes from a series of films I have always loved, courtesy of local filmmaker (and Seal Sands former employee) Maxy Bianco, whose work focuses on the industrial breakdown of the area and how local characters thrive alternatively, interacting with nature, finding wonder in an unlikely place. In Iris Murdoch’s philosophy she talked about the act of ‘unselfing’, something I have thought much about in recent years and explore in my writing. One of my best examples of an ‘unselfing’ is the time I was on a jet lagged, homesick jog around Sydney Harbour whilst on tour. As I reached the foot of the bridge, I made out some writing, ‘Dorman Long’ stamped into the side, and was suddenly lifted, on the other side of the world, by the love and pride of my home town.”
