grand salvo: slay my in my sleep

The Preservation label presents Slay Me in My Sleep, the sixth album from Melbourne's Grand Salvo. Under the guise of Grand Salvo, Paddy Mann has established himself as a songwriter of unique heart and soul with a depth of lyricism matched by warm but widescreen musical vision. 2009's Soil Creatures sealed his reputation, being his most stark and concise statement yet. With Slay Me in My Sleep, Mann has returned to familiar territory, writing a parable as song cycle similar to his epic fairytale from 2008, Death. An evocation of time and memory, it is a tale of star-crossed lovers. A delinquent boy breaks into an old woman's home and discovers an antique photo of a girl. He instantly falls in love. After the old woman scares him off, though, he eventually returns, consumed and obsessed by the girl in the photo. The old woman is waiting, and so it begins. It is a lavishly decorated and unabashed romantic melodrama, set to exquisite strings (cello, violin and harp), dancing woodwinds and searching brass. Within these gorgeous orchestrations, tracing around the folk song idiom are intimate narratives of unqualified affection and compelling emotion. Slay Me in My Sleep also marks the first use of an electric guitar in any Grand Salvo recording. Slay Me in My Sleep was largely recorded and co-produced in Berlin by composer Nils Frahm, who has worked extensively with similarly singular artists such as Peter Broderick and Greg Haines. His masterful piano-playing appears throughout, alongside vocal contributions by Heather Woods Broderick, Laura Jean and Luluc's Zoe Randall. After the masterful Soil Creatures, Paddy Mann has once extended himself on Slay Me in My Sleep, telling a tale of strange love with vivid detail, whimsy and beauty, in a special way only he knows how.