Given the global hullabaloo surrounding this morning’s surprise double album appearance of The Tortured Poets Department, The Silver Reserve could well have thought he had certainly chosen a bad week to release his new single. But while millions of Swifties worldwide were going absolutely gaga, Taylor Swift didn’t quite make it onto God Is In The TV’s current edition of Video of the Week. The honour and prestige instead fell to The Silver Reserve’s ‘Slow TV.’
And ‘Slow TV’ in all its 88 seconds of perfectly bleak beauty gets an airing tonight. And either side of ‘Slow TV’, Matthew Sturgess – the man who is The Silver Reserve – delivers another ten of his atmospherically charged, emotionally fitting songs that move back and forth along a spectrum between buoyancy and vulnerability. He frames personal songs about his daughters, the sea, and friendships in sharp, clean, and often intricate melodies that illuminate the transparency of his messages.
The Silver Reserve is here in The Black Swan public house – an exquisitely renovated Georgian building which dates from the 15th century – as part of local live music promoter, The Velvet Sheep’s exciting new venture, Moth to a Flame candlelit soirée. With its carefully subdued lighting, the small oak-panelled room at the top of the stairs provides the most perfect, intimate setting in which to experience such deeply personal songs.
Water is a recurring theme in much of The Silver Reserve’s material, something that perhaps stems from Matthew Sturgess having originally hailed from Hornsea in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Yet where that seaside town could easily be marketed as the land that time forgot, the music of The Silver Reserve lives in the present. With its gloriously unexpected blast of fuzzed-up guitar ‘Drowning In Happiness’ speaks sonically of the here and now. And the equally visceral arrangement of ‘Trophic Cascades’ – quite possibly The Silver Reserve’s next single – points towards a bright future for this hugely talented songwriter.
Photos: Simon Godley
Some more photos of The Silver Reserve at The Black Swan, York