Savoy Grand - The Lost Horizon

by John Clarkson

published: 4 / 3 / 2004

Label: Glitterhouse Records
Format: CDS

Masterly new EP from Nottingham group, Savoy Grand, who have created "an almost epic stateliness" out of almost nothing on this latest offering

Review

Perhaps what is most remarkable about Savoy Grand's new four song EP, 'The Lost Horizon', is its sense of grandness. On initial listening it seems to have an almost epic stateliness, but subsequent hearings in fact prove it to be a rather stark affair. In employing just one creaking, occasionally shimmering acoustic guitar ; odd light brushes of piano and percussion, and at one point on the second track 'Between Two Rivers' a brief, mournful gust of French horn, there is hardly anything there with which to create a big sound. Savoy Grand have been playing together since 1998, and released their first single, 'The Moving Air', a limited-to-1000-copies 7" on the British label Pickled Egg. They then moved to the German label Glitterhouse where they still remain, and with whom they have released two previous EPs, 'Dirty Pillows' and 'Survivor', and an album, 'Burn the Furniture'. The Nottingham-based group have a revolving line-up, and, while the group often operate as a four-piece, this third EP features just core member Gerard Langley and percussionist Kevin O' Riordan. Recorded almost entirely in his home, much of the reason for the false expansiveness of 'The Lost Horizon' lies in Langley's uncluttered and organic production work which allows each of the few instruments involved their own sense of natural space. The rest comes from his delicately paced-out vocals, which are both eerily elongated and androgynous-sounding. Langley has a similarly tidy way with words. He has the ability to sum up in a sentence or a phrase with his lovelorn, melancholy lyrics a whole situation or a scenario. " I can't let you go/and you don't want me to stay/because you made me what I am" he croons on the opening track, 'Reason to Leave', capturing in a matter of moments the claustrophobic desperation of a relationship in freefall. "You speak of a new day, but it never comes/You talk of a new life but not this one" he sings on the nine minute long final track 'From the Gold Hotel', which tells of another romance in turmoil, and concludes with a magnificently desolate final snapshot of the couple involved split up and one half abandoned, while the other's family sinisterly waits outside the front door ready to help them move out. Savoy Grand have created a lot on this out of very little. Carefully-crafted, and carved out with a sculptor’s fine eye for detail, 'The Lost Horizon’ is very special.