Cue The Choir

There's a raw earthiness matched by a deep honesty in the music of Melbourne singer/songwriter Cash Savage that demands a subtle sensitivity to the kind of gritty, dark rootsy soundscape within which she writes. So she struck gold in Graveyard Train's co-singer, songwriter and guitarist Nick Finch, who produced the new album, The Hypnotiser, for her seven-piece band Melbourne's Cash Savage & The Last Drinks.

“I've known Nick for about fifteen years,” Savage explains, “so when he said he wanted to produce the album, I drunkenly said yes, and the next morning I rang him and said, 'Yes, that's a great idea – let's do that'. He's quite an extraordinary musician – he's got a very keen ear for things and I guess what Nick brought to the album was a lot of crazy ideas that really seemed to pay off. And he didn't have to worry about steppin' on any toes 'cause he doesn't have to be in the band van with any of us!”

The sonic palette across the album runs from the bittersweet simplicity of Howling For Me – two guitars, two voices – to a full-blown 45-voice choir, strings and horns, the choir something envisaged right at the beginning of the composing I'm In Love and title track, Hypnotiser, which Finch wrote specifically for Savage.

“I know that seems crazy,” she admits, “but Nick helped me write I'm In Love and I actually have a recording of the night when we wrote it, and it's got us, really drunkenly, singing the choir part in the background. Hypnotiser, when he wrote that, I don't think he initially said choir, but when we were thinking about it more, we said, 'Let's try with the choir'. I mean, the lyric says, “Here comes the gospel choir”, so there aren't a lot of things you can do other than have a gospel choir,” she chuckles.

“Nick said when he wrote Hypnotiser, it was written for me. I would like to have written those lines but even as big a wanker as I am I don't know how easily I could have written them for myself, but I really do enjoy performing it. As I said I've known him for fifteen years and we've been in bands together almost that whole time, or been musically intertwined, so we've written a lot of songs together and he knows me quite well so he's definitely someone I would allow to write a song about me in that vein.

“I always try and write for myself and with this album, I guess there were some things that I felt needed to be on there. I try and keep it as personal as possible. The only songs that took a lot more thought in a way were the ones that were not quite my story. So 95ks [To Sandy Point] is a friend of mine's story, and when he told me [it] I said I want to write a song about that, and he said, 'Fucking great!'