Danny Saul
Harsh, Final

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Sound clips for Harsh, Final by Danny Saul: on CD at Norman Records UK. CD, White Box, WHITEBOX 004, £8.59.

What their label says...

Danny Saul has been an active part of a largely undocumented Manchester
music scene for nearly 10 years – to quote one local commentator, ‘if a band
in Manchester stays in one place for long enough Danny Saul will join them’.
As a self-appointed ‘correctional catalyst’ he has played with Stranger Son
Of WB (bass), Easter (guitar), Polythene (attitude) and Barbarians
(destroying stuff) amongst others, as well as continuing an ongoing live
collaboration with Greg Haines as Pub Ambient improvising duo Liondialer
(whose ‘LIVE!’ album White Box released earlier this year). His parallel
role as an opinionated local irritant can often alienate people, but this
consistent anti-bullshit approach has also endeared him to many more.

Danny has no time for fakes and fakery, and sad to say, Manchester music has
both in abundance.  As guitarist with Tsuji Giri (Manchester's biggest and
best kept secret ‘almost’ band of recent years, alongside The Sonar Yen),
Saul self-released a Steve Albini-recorded album in 2005, with the band
promptly self-destructing upon release. After all the tribulations
associated with the process of production and shared decision-making, Danny
rethought every aspect of how to perform and record with the minimum of
intervention or interference; ‘Harsh, Final’ is the culmination of a bloody
minded pursuit for a personal satisfaction in both making music and Doing
Things Right.

 ‘Your Death’ opens the album with softly plucked acoustic guitar, and
proceeds to build layers of acoustic and electric guitars into a hazed
atmosphere, which suddenly comes into focus as the track’s defining chords
state that this is a song, and that everything put in place so far is only
framework. And in many ways this typifies what makes the record really tick:
the fission between the pull of the songs and the musical dynamics working
within and yet outside them. Be sure - Danny Saul is very much not a
conventional singer-songwriter, with all the compromise and baggage that
carries with it.

These are tunes sensitively drawn, defiantly made, and deliberately too long
for both radio and the short attention spans of his peers. Instead we are
allowed to revel in the long-form, are left grasping for reference points,
brazen novelty long ago discarded as mere trivia. 'My Escape' details “a
wall of doubt” with a crumbling, threatened, growling undercarriage
barraging the tune, about to collapse beneath the listener at any moment.
The album builds to a head on the wonderful 'Cannonball', just shy of
thirteen minutes, and is bracketed by two shorter pieces '(harsh)' and
'(final)', which bring a heady sense of disorientation and an unusual focus
to the longer tune resting between them. Check this track and reflect on
"the outcome / we wait / to see".

'Harsh, Final' maintains this pared-down and deliberate atmosphere
throughout - recurring themes of death and escape culminate in a cover of a
heartfelt lament for a personal loss by Manchester's Hotpants Romance (think
a much more glamorous Shaggs), here reinterpreted as an oppressive and
over-possessive love song. Its cumulative build of layered guitar and
harmony vocals eventually fades, leaving Saul's solitary voice reassuring
the listener that “we'll be OK / you'll see”', echoing the album as it
began, with a single exposed musician [guitar, vocal], indelibly human and
unforgettably resonant.