Singer, beat-boxer and producer Grace Savage is back after an 18-month break with the single ‘Lively Eyes’, a song that celebrates love, lifelong friendship and loss. During the break she has become a mother, taken stock and decided to take more control over her career from production to promotion and this has included turning to fans to help support her work via crowdfunding; in this case Patreon.
It was through Patreon that one of her backers, Annie, commissioned Grace to create a song based on their personal story of love and loss with partner Andrea. Grace says: “It is a song about a queer relationship but is a tribute to the power of love, friendship and resilience in us all. I hope it comforts listeners who have experienced grief. Thank you, Annie, for trusting me and letting me turn your story into art.”
This tribute to Annie and Andrea’s love was built over two years of correspondence between Grace and Annie, and you can feel from the performance how much Grace has tapped into a wellspring of emotion. ‘Lively’ Eyes’ is built on a gentle pulse that seems to mirror the pull of love and the push of grief. The soaring chorus is an eddying Yin and Yang that cries “Oh it’s so cruel, and it’s such a shame, to lose the only one you know you can’t replace” but ends on the tribute “She ain’t around but it doesn’t mean that she’ll fade. Lively eyes. Lively eyes”.
The notion of ‘Lively Eyes’ is a beautiful one. Eyes remain a constant in someone’s life; windows to the soul as the saying goes, even more so when the window looks into eyes of a soulmate. The beauty and the melancholy are inseparable here and I think that Annie is lucky to have shared such a love and have it represented so respectfully by Grace. The lightning of love captured in a bottle forever.
Grace Savage links: Website | Patreon | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Soundcloud | Spotify
Review by Paul F Cook
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