Stream Beautiful Desolation, the debut album from Paul Thomas Saunders

Leeds songwriter Paul Thomas Saunders has been bubbling under the surface for a short while, now readying his debut LP Beautiful Desolation for release next week (7 April) via Atlantic Records.

Taking inspiration from composers such as Vangelis and Jean-Claude Vannier, as well as wider artistic influences from outside of the music world, there’s a marked intelligence on the release that’s rare to see on a musician’s first effort. Ahead of that due date, Best Fit have the exclusive stream of the record as well as a track-by-track rundown of the release in Saunders’ own words.

The album will be marked by a full UK tour during April, kicking off in Birmingham before playing London, Leeds, Manchester, Bristol and other major cities.

Read our recent Introducing feature with Saunders here and stream the LP in full beneath:

“Kawai Celeste”

A friend from Leeds gave us a big old 80′s Kawai organ because he was moving out. It’s a really inappropriately large machine but it has some beautiful sounds, not to its mention a spectacular back lit button display. This thing feels like you’re manning a space craft. Anyhow, there’s an effect you find on a lot of organs from that era called Celeste. ‘Celeste’ is an old pipe organ technique where you detune a set of pipes subtlety from each other so that the frequency waves don’t line up, creating what’s commonly known now as Chorus. Celeste is French for “Heavenly”, so you can kind of imagine the reverby, chorus laden result. So that’s where the name comes from, it was a working title that stuck. It also has lovely trumpets.

“Good Women”

Good Women was a fun track to record, it’s a really simple song, it’s just three chords but the production is really dense. I like big layered tracks because it gives you the freedom to experience the track differently each time. There’s nuances and instrumentation you might not pick out until the 5th or 6th time you listen to the track. I love listening to tracks like that. I wanted the chords to be simple so everything could blur into each other, all the synth lines and drones just shimmer and hum through the each section with no abrupt interruptions. It makes things more dreamy and expansive. This track’s all about that, covering vast space with little movement.

“Appointment in Samarra”

Appointment in Samarra is a favourite of mine. It’s a really hard song to sing though, practically every note is painful. It feels like sword swallowing with a serrated edge. You get the picture. It’s based on an old fable about being unable to escape your destiny. It goes like this:

“The Appointment in Samarra”
(as retold by W. Somerset Maugham )

“The speaker is Death

There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating getsture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

“Waking & Evening Prayers for Rosemary-Mai”

Waking and Evening Prayers is the oldest song on the album. I hadn’t really written many serious songs before this, I think you can tell as there’s a naïvety to the lyrics. I think the person who the song is about is a really typical stoic English man whose partner is overseas in the military. I don’t think you need to keep that in mind when you listen to the song, but it helped me focus the atmosphere of the song. I wanted it to sound like inner madness slowly breaking out through his perceived calm.

“In High Heels Burn it Down”

In High Heels Burn is Down is by far the most soul crushing song I’ve ever recorded. For months it was mine and Max’s favourite song on the record, in our heads, but in reality it sounded dreadful. It’s a very different song to anything else we’ve done, perhaps that’s why. There were definitely points when I was sure we should just drop it completely, but I think it turned out to be the most immediate track on the album. Wholly unintentional, but I hear all the best things are.

“Wreckheads and the Female Form”

It’s easy to forget that there are no tangible boundaries for pop music… I guess there are, any area in between critical acclaim and a tonne of sales is usually where you’re supposed to frequent, but anyway. This song was really exciting for me, I don’t think it’s necessarily radio fodder, but I wanted a song that felt like it was being hung in zero gravity. It’s meant to be a song, within a soundscape. So there you go.

“A Lunar Veterans Guide to Re-entry”

I can never remember the words to this song when we play it live. I have no idea why. This song is all about trying to capture the rushing feeling of a car speeding through a tunnel, I wanted you to hear the trails of artificial light over your head. That image for me was the inspiration behind the production. I think it sounds like a wall of fluid colourful noise.

“Starless State of the Moonless Barrows”

I think this song is a great example of how poor our sense of self-restraint is. It’s a really heavily orchestrated track, but I stand by that everything needs to be there. The bridge is my favourite part of this song, the keyboard sounds like Christmas lights.

“Santa Muertes Lightning & Flare”

This may be the closest to writing a symphony I ever get. I wanted to be careful that the choruses weren’t mindlessly huge in this song though, we tried to reign it in so the last minute hits you like a rock in a cops face. Santa Muerte is the Mexican folklore female saint of death. Shes supposed to watch over the departed. They have a national Day of the Dead where Santa Muerte and the dead are celebrated, if that isn’t something to inspire a song I don’t know what is.

“On Into the Night”

Sometimes songs take me months to write, 99 times out of 100 this is the case. But sometimes I get lucky and write something in 30 minutes. On into the Night was the latter. I feel like it touches on a lot of the moods of the album over a short time, it’s almost a medley of the production over the album, but not as lame as that sounds. As soon as we finished it I knew it was going to be the closer though. It sounds conclusive.

Paul Thomas Saunders plays the following live dates:

April
7 – The Hare & Hounds, Birmingham
8 – Bodega, Nottingham
9 – King Tuts, Glasgow
11 – Belgrave Music Hall, Leeds
12 – Soup Kitchen, Manchester
13 – Joiners, Southampton
15 – Louisiana, Bristol
16 – Art Bar, Oxford
17 – The Lexington, London
19 – Stockton Calling (The Kids Are Solid Gold Stage)

Photo by Howard Melnyczuk