Pink in each, bright blue, bright green, the forthcoming album from Dave Scanlon on Whatever’s Clever Records, was written, recorded and performed alone. This solitary nature of the record’s creation is inherent to its sound, each song marked by a meditative simplicity only possible through a deep engagement with one’s own depths. Art as austerity, a kind of ascetic practice, a stripping away of excesses in hope of moving closer to one’s centre and thus coming to understand the kernel of mystery or truth that surely sits in wait.
Today, we’re delighted to share the album’s lead single, ‘Water’s No Crop’, complete with a video by Nina Vroemen. Compelled by an organic guitar line and dressed with unadorned vocals, the track is grounded in Dave Scanlon’s abstemious practice, and refutes the notion that austerity is inherently cold and barren. Because despite the simplicity, and the fact it barely lasts three minutes, the song forms a warm and hospitable space. An almost self-contradictory dimension, where the verse-chorus structure folds over itself it perpetuity, and the deepest pictures are painted by the most disciplined, frugal hand.
We live strictly for each other arrangements
Fend off lonely claims aimed to distract our verbal arrangements
Each day I cut my hair
Each day I cut my hairCalendar fueled by the body’s crop
I’d like to be in your harvest
Keep the day’s growth in jars
I’d like to be in your harvestWater’s no crop I’d offer
I wished you’d offered first
For Dave Scanlon, the process of making music is not the means but the end, the process its own form of art. Art that strives not to communicate with an exterior listener, rather to inspire others to begin their own interior explorations. “This is sacred music written for my own personal practice,” Scanlon explains. “If it is at all utilitarian, I hope that it encourages you to create something for yourself.”
Pink in each, bright blue, bright green is set for release in January 2021 via Whatever’s Clever and you can pre-order it now from the Dave Scanlon Bandcamp page.
Header photo by Emma Banay