There is a clear sonic juxtaposition that drives Winter Aid’s latest single “Silk”. Cascading synths give the whole tune a light-hearted nature while deeply personal lyrics anchor the warping arrangement to earth. Hushed melodies evoke a lo-fi warmth to round out the complexity of this single, with so many moving parts settling in without outdoing the next. Underneath the stellar production is a stirring balladry with infectious melodic phrasing for an overall infectiousness that breaks the sky on a cloudy day.
“The music for Silk arrived at some point in late 2019. I had set up my piano near the bay windows of our San Francisco apartment – we’d been in the city about a year. It was little more than a shoebox, but it had bay windows that would fill it with sunset, dazzling and red, and so my music started to sound brighter and warmer than when I was living in Ireland.” Explains Winter Aid on the origin of his sound. “Still, by the time I finished the lyrics, it was late 2020, and smoke was in the air. The year had seen me canvassing for a politician I believed in, and marching for causes I believed in, but by the end of the year things felt thwarted and hopeless – the hope of learning the lessons of 2020 and pursuing better public health, or justice for the aggrieved or their aggressors, seemed very distant”.
Winter Aid continues, “It seemed weirdly fitting to match these cynical lyrics to the brightest and happiest music I had written and maybe made it easier to keep it under three minutes. I was vaguely aware I was writing a bit of a Californian album, and I think this song does a good job of letting in that golden light while also holding onto the kind of feeling that drives me to music in the first place. Someone told me it sounded like Spencer Krug, which I do agree with in retrospect (he’s a major influence on me) but I have to admit I was also listening to a lot of Grandaddy at that point. Having moved to California, all their music suddenly clicked in a new way, even the stuff I had loved before. I can hear ‘The Sophtware Slump’ on this song, especially in the drums and the sense of lightness I tried to borrow from that album.”
