[Arbutus Records, 2010]

words// ashley opheim

Sean Nicholas Savage’s newest release, Movin Up In Society, is imaginative, prophetic, poetic, motivational, and impossibly positive in all the right, simple ways. Savage dismisses all the current trends of the current music ‘scene’ and delivers a record that encompasses the true origins of a great album.

Remember when music was transformative? When it had the ability to take you out of a darkness and into a rainbow of sound? It feels like Savage has found all the right ways to transform the listener into a strange, unworldly, but tangible world.

Musically, Movin Up In Society is reminiscent of a folk, pop, and country sound. Yet, it’s weird and completely Sean Nicholas Savage. Lyrically, it embraces an old fashioned story-telling esthetic, paired with contemporary lyrical sensibilities. The songs on Movin Up In Society show a maturity, but also a persistent childishness that Savage will surely never grow out of.

I am listening to this album on a typical rainy Montreal day and thinking ‘damn, damn, damn – how does Sean manage to put something completely new and progressive out every time?’ This album is about growing up, growing peripheral sensibilities, and
exploring the dark and soft spots of consciousness.

“Paradise O Paradise” is hauntingly reminiscent of an ‘80s Leonard Cohen sound, taking the listener from the slums of ‘oil cities’ to dreams of paradise with it’s ‘pretty flowers.’ Title track “Moving Up in Society” seems to encompass a hopeful youth on the verge of growing up in contemporary society. Savage approaches lyrical subject matter with poise and poetry—lyrics that manage to pinch you in all the right places.

Savage’s lyrics demand attention in their impressive simplicity. It is refreshing to hear an artist deal with life’s problems so effortlessly in song. On “A Golden Dream” Savage sings Who is who and what is what / Who are you and what am I? We can sing, we have wings / We can sing and we can fly. And again, the simplicity of complexity on “Rowdy River of Love:” I know the hard way, and it’s not bringing me down. I’m sailing heart-bound on the rowdy river of live.

“The Bird Nest Princess” is a callback to the beat poets and is perhaps what truly stands out on the album to me.

Like all of Sean Nicholas Savage’s music, it is either love or hate. Over the past few years he has put out a ridiculously confused array of musical genres, yet, they are all equally intriguing and fantastic. Savage’s music is music to get lost in; to fall in love with; to inspire. To run naked and fearless through our oil cities dreaming of flowers and something better.