Sant, Bobby
My Dead Town
MY DEAD TOWN hits close to home on many levels. The dramatic lyric lines on death, love and despair echoes as much of own experiences of loss as of images capturing society's demise. Given to the thematics, the location for the album's recordings could not have been more suiting; in the church of Bobby's rural home town. During four evenings in November 2012, all tracks were recorded live without any overdubs and many of the songs were also cut on the first take. The closing song, the narrating 'Letter 44' was written, rehearsed and recorded under the course of just a few hours. "I thought, let's just face the dark, embrace it and tranform it to something beautiful." After 2011's frantic debut IT'S JUST A LONELY FEELING, Bobby Sant now returns in an edgy, but sophisticated blues ballad style, not far from Johnny Cash's last albums, the Appalachian folk tradition or Nick Cave's most acoustic material. The minimalistic production consists as much of silence as of Sant's dark vocals backed with acoustic guitar, piano and occasional strings and harmony vocals. Meanwhile, the Forshaga church itself exposes its size almost like an extra musician when a natural reverb echoes through MY DEAD TOWN's most intense moments. Though the mood is sombre, the songs are wide-ranged and moves from loud to silent, from resentment to forgiveness, from anger to cunning wit. And through the bitterness, Sant expresses a "willing to love again", and the album's coldness is accordingly balanced with a warm halo of hope.