Video of the Moment #2287: Josh Savage
Singer/songwriter Josh Savage has just unveiled a strikingly beautiful promo video for his new single ‘Whisper in the Snow’. Unable to travel to find appropriate weather for their vision of the promo, director Siobhan Cox and crew had to wait and hope for snow in the UK for the filming. They finally ended up on Pen Y Fan in Wales, where they were able to create a simple yet remarkably appropriate visual representation for the lyrical and musical intent of Savage’s composition. The video finds Savage alone on a snowy mountain side, where the falling flakes of snow and the bright winter sunlight combine to create moments of blinding haze, along with moments of stark clarity.
The musical arrangement of ‘Whisper in the Snow’ has a similar effect. Savage joins voices with 17-year-old newcomer Alice Pearl, underpinning her ethereally fragile soprano with the lean dexterity of his own lithe baritone. Their voices are equal in prominence, but never competing, in the song’s poignant refrain, “I cannot believe I let you go / like a whisper in the snow”. The counterpoint between the voices is particularly effective in the second verse lines “you’ve always been impulsive / running wild or running blind”. I’m not sure if this is due to Savage’s clever partwriting or his flawless vocal delivery of the lower harmony, but I suspect it’s probably a combination of the two.
The song’s echoing electric guitar backdrop reminds me very strongly of similar arrangements on Ben Howard’s stunning 2014 album ‘I Forget Where We Were’, but Savage’s work here doesn’t aspire to that kind of broad sonic evolution. One of the singular beauties in Savage’s songwriting is that he is able to capture discrete moments of exquisite emotion in smaller, more concise song forms. He allows the haunting guitar riff ‘Whisper in the Snow’ to stand on its own without transformation, elegantly expressing the austere brilliance of the song’s wintry thematic setting.
Josh Savage is currently on tour, performing a series of living room and small venue shows throughout Europe; you can find a full listing of upcoming dates on his official Web site. TGTF’s previous coverage of Josh Savage is collected back here.
[youtube]https://youtu.be/TjWAYZJQxMw[/youtube]
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