Salt Ashes first pricked up Youtube ears all round with her ethereal and intricately constructed cover of Depeche Mode’s ‘Black Celebration’, all vast soundscapes and dark hearts of thunderclouds.
By Patrick Cash
A 22-year-old hailing from Brighton, with a feverish fetish for a tantalising slice of her idol Giorgio Moroder, she’s now back with second original single ‘If You Let Me Go’. And it’s pretty damn good.
The beat bounces in with a bolshey decadence, sashaying in its definite disco origins, but laced with a shadow of darker depth. Electronic bass and beeps intertwine with silver crashes of synth, until Salt Ashes’ snow white vocals themselves gorgeously begin. Her voice is rich with resonance, dexterous in its emotive timbre; you can hear the feeling of the lyrics reflected in her tone, but still retaining an essence of glass-like purity.
Lyrically, the song is particularly beautiful. Like Annie Lennox’s ‘Walking on Broken Glass’, Salt Ashes is able to marry an ostensibly joyous backing tune to a lyrical lexicon that is, in truth, quite poignant. ‘Mouth wide you’re out the door, bruises they hurt before, discounting every law,’ she sings, ‘we can make it right, and you know and you know and you know you want to try, oh it won’t be enough, so sit up and create a lie.’ The singer seems to understand she’s involved in a situation that will ultimately be harmful for her wellbeing, but is so self-tied to the person who has the power to hurt her, that she’s willing to indulge in her knowing delusion.
This thinking comes to a zenith with the chorus itself: ‘you don’t have to rescue me, if you let me go / you don’t need to rescue me, because my blood is stone.’ Here an ambiguity seeps into the words; on one level the speaker is stirring a strength for her certain abandonment, steeling herself from further damage. On a darker parallel, she is destroyed by her former lover; put beyond possibility of rescue. It could be indicative of the twin-pronged path we all face after a breakup: whether to take strength from what went wrong and forge a new, better path, or to descend into despair and self-destruction.
Overall this is a finely wrought pop song that is immediately fluid upon the ear, with a deeper message lying beneath the surface. It speaks well itself as a sole flare, but also as a precursor for Salt Ashes’ forthcoming album.
•‘If You Let Me Go’ by Salt Ashes is out on Monday 20th October.
