Salmon Brothers Outline New LP 'More To Love' Honouring Nick Weaver

The debut album by the Salmon Brothers, More To Love, isn’t just fun to dance to, but it’s a poignant tribute to Nick Weaver—the founder of the Sydney band Deep Sea Arcade—by bandmate Nick Meredith. Weaver passed away at 37 years old in 2021 following a diagnosis of a particularly nasty type of bowel cancer.

More To Love is the final release of Weaver’s works. His mother, Helen Wellings, remarked of the release: “I defy anyone listening to Salmon Brothers songs not to feel upbeat at the sheer joy and energy they radiate. The two Nicks formed a perfect duo, and it’s heartwarming to know that creating what turned out to be his last work gave my Nick the greatest pleasure and sense of liberation he’d ever felt musically.

“I’m thrilled he reached those heights of happiness that culminated in ten amazing tracks you never tire of listening to. Thank you, Nick Meredith, for collaborating with him and making him sparkle.”

• Nick Weaver Honoured In Posthumous Album

To celebrate the release and inform fans about the inspiration behind each track on More To Love, Nick Meredith and Helen Wellings have provided The Music with a track-by-track exploration of the album.

Fools Can't Tell No Lies – 3:45

‘There’s no better man to be with than the one you see straight through’. This song is based on the premise that the best person to be by your side is someone you can read all the time, someone that can’t say no to you, someone who can’t possibly be untrue. A fool that is unable to tell you anything but the truth, even when it is better to lie. We spent a lot of time obsessing over the Bee Gees’ album, Spirits Having Flown—one of the greatest albums ever written. The production was inspired by Boz Scaggs’ Low Down.

The groove of the song is something we worked on for a long time and the orchestra was added later after the track was essentially finished. Our plan was to get rich and famous off this record and then do our second record with a full symphony orchestra.

Sugar Daddy's Lament – 4:13

Can true love be bought? Written from the point of view of a sugar daddy, a man completely besotted with his sugar baby. He knows deep down that she loves him and that he will do anything for her. He gets that others don’t understand their intricate arrangement but it still plays on his mind from time to time.

Two big influences on this song were Hall and Oates (Kiss On My List) and Coolio (Gangsters Paradise). So many of Nick’s lyrics have more than one meaning, and despite what I have described here, Nick didn’t tell me how this song came about. While it’s nice to have some backstory of what the song is about, it’s really irrelevant when someone interprets it in a way that is special for them.

VIP Lounge – 4:35

VIP Lounge is a song about gambling addiction. In 2020 – 21, $12.18 billion was lost by people playing pokies. This song tells the story of a character, based in reality, that is stuck in the depths of an addiction from which he can’t free himself. Addiction comes in many forms but gambling is one of the few that is actively encouraged by the government. 

We were originally trying to get a female singer to sing the pre chorus as the voice of our VIP Lounge employee. She’s there to congratulate him when he wins and there to console him when he loses. She’s the object of our main character’s obsession. We had a Karl Laskowski sax solo as a placeholder in that section, but we loved it so much that we scrapped the idea of another vocalist. Karl really changed the game with so many of our tracks. Many of the sax and flute melodies you hear are just him riffing, which turned out to be perfect. We just had to stick a microphone in front of him and let him do his thing. 

The track started out with me (Nick Meredith) mucking around on the keyboard, trying to make something like Hall and Oates with a Samba feel. It didn’t really eventuate, but a cool keyboard riff emerged from the attempt. Nick recorded the vocals at his home studio, and the rest of the instruments were recorded at Free Energy Device, Camperdown.

As with a lot of things we did, the Rhodes solo in the middle of the track was something I did as a joke but we ended up loving it so much we kept it in the song. One thing that’s not a joke is Harry Sutherland’s funky organ. His playing adds a great rhythmic counterpoint to the track. That’s also Harry soloing in the outro with Karl. During the final edit I was forced to cut the outro short because I was getting carried away listening the beauty of Karl and Harry’s dueling solos. 

Two Parts Of A Broken Heart – 4:28

The original title of this track was Love Is Made (Day By Day), and it was the song that took the longest to get together. It features Simon Relf in the second verse. In my opinion, the line ‘Spoken words are silver but unspoken words are gold’ is one of the best ever written.

The song is about connection. How two people can, damaged however they may be, come together to form something whole. Two parts of a broken heart coming together to make one. No matter how independent we are, no matter how far we think we’ve come by ourselves, in the end we are nothing on our own.

Slow And Steady Wins My Heart – 3:33

Persistence is not always a virtue. Despite the absolute funk laid down by Karl on his horn here, the track details the inner thoughts of a creepy stalker. Someone who takes pleasure sitting in their car watching their object of desire getting dressed though the window.

One of the genius qualities of Nick Weaver was his ability to write about something creepy, taboo or just plain weird, with a sense of humour and whimsical irony. Some people might get the wrong idea about writing a song from the point of view of a stalker but we all have a fascination with people like that.  

‘Just a stranger at the window. One that you could surely learn to love.’

We were listening to David Bowie during this session. We wanted the horns to have a super tight yet powerful quality to them whilst adding a good smattering of cowbells in there for good measure.

Coming Up For Air – 4:51

Imagine you’re sitting on a super sexy beach, and the person you’re mad about just appears from the water and begins walking towards you. Kind of like the scene in Casino Royale when James Bond is walking out of the water. But instead of brooding, sinister music, it’s this song.

This was the first track that we ever wrote together. We had been sending each other ideas here and there for a little while, but this was the first time we had got into the studio and come up with something. Hugely inspired by George Benson’s Breezin, this track just kind of appeared out of nowhere for us. The band was essentially born from it. We got together in the studio one night with a couple of bottles of Rosé and some crackers and really just started to play. The track came together pretty quickly but as with the rest of the album, it really came to life when we had Karl and Seb come and play on it.

It’s about that feeling of seeing the person you love, trying to remain aloof and cool but having your breath taken away. When I see you it’s like coming up for air.

More To Love – 5:50

This track epitomises the essence of Salmon Brothers music: fun, dancey, captivating melodies and clever lyrics carrying multi-layered hidden meanings. All is not what it seems in the words, “so much more to love”.

This song was inspired by a couple who appeared on the Jerry Springer show, one of whom had a feeding fetish. The compulsion to incessantly feed someone you love. A concept that Nick found lyrically interesting. The subject matter is offset by the disco vibe we wanted for the song we wanted from the outset.

The track is extremely groovy and greatly inspired by the Alan Parsons project and Daft Punk. Like the rest of the album, most of the instruments were recorded in our studio in Camperdown. But many of the synths were recorded at M.E.S.S in Melbourne on the Roland System 100 and the Yamaha CS80. MVP on this track goes to Karl Laskowski, whose absolutely burning EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument) solo lifts this song into another dimension. Karl’s sense of syncopation propels the track along and really adds a lot to the groove. We had the EWI solo in mind before the song was anywhere near finished. 

We wanted to give the song a kind of ‘outer space’ feel. The Synth pads in the background and the vocoder sparkly synth sounds at the beginning of the song both pay homage to the early 70’s when space exploration was new. A Lot of the synth pads you hear are actual Seb Bartels’ guitar disguised as a keyboard. As I was working on the song one afternoon, I bumped into Harry Sutherland and convinced him to come and play a solo over the face out of the track. A beautiful final venture into outer space. 

This was always a favourite of ours to listen to after a recording session. The original fade out goes on for about 5 minutes. Nick always laughed at my fade outs because they were either ridiculously long or ridiculously short. Something I probably won’t change about myself in the near future. 

Peaches – 2:54

Peaches was technically the first song we recorded together. It started out as Nick asking me to play drums on a track for his solo album he was writing. He had the demo versions of the guitar, bass and vocals all done before it came to me. During the process of recording we started chatting about music and life and thought maybe we should do another song together (this ended up being Coming Up for Air).

I really had no input in the lyric writing with this track and I actually have no idea of the meaning. But knowing Nick, I would assume that what he sings isn’t necessarily what he means. Nick wrote deep lyrics that were almost always describing some personal experience. 

Salmon Brothers Theme – 6:26

We both love disco and would play a whole bunch of tracks in our DJ sets. This track was an attempt at channelling Cerrone and his epic disco hits. There is so much going on here but Nick was one of best bass players I’d ever played with. My feelings towards him and our sense of connection are personified in this track at the 4 minutes at 35 second mark. I had already recorded a demo drum take and Nick was adding some bass. He hadn’t fully listened to my drum take as we were just mucking around.

We do the exact same fill and the exact same time without planning it. I remember that moment and us bursting into laughter. If this doesn’t make you dance, especially with Karl lights up his flute then I’m. afraid there is no hope for you.

Now That The Music Has Changed - 5:09

The music industry is notoriously fickle and exploitative, and eventually everyone becomes irrelevant. Both of us thought about this a lot during the making of the record. We had both been in a bunch of bands before getting together as Salmon Brothers and experienced all the good and bad that comes with being in a band. Salmon Brothers band was a funky antidote to all that we hated about our old projects. 

At its core, the song's themes are about getting older and becoming irrelevant. Not that we cared too much, but it’s something that we talked about and thought about during the pandemic as live music stopped. This was around the time that Nick finally wrapped up Deep Sea Arcade, the process that had weighed heavily on his mind for years. For him, having the time and freedom to make other music was truly liberating. 

This track started life as a receding I did in my attic when I was living in Annandale before the lockdowns. It was stinking hot in summer and freezing cold in winter. A classic Inner west share house. After I came up with a few ideas we did our usual thing and met up at Richie’s studio to work on it together. It’s technically not finished as we still had a bit more to add. I just don’t want to take that liberty with this song as it was the track with the most left to do on it. 

There’s a part of me which doesn’t want this album to come out because it means this thing Nick and I had together is now over. Obviously, there is another part which wants the world to hear it. But that is why the track is 80% done in my opinion. But sometimes those are the best ones an album 🥰

FURTHER TRACK DESCRIPTIONS - WRITTEN BY HELEN WELLINGS

Fool’s Can’t Tell No Lies

‘There’s no better man to be with than the one you see straight through’.

This song is based on the premise that the best person to be by your side is someone you can read, someone that can’t say no to you, someone who can’t possibly be untrue. A fool will always tell the truth, even when it's better to lie.

We spent a lot of time obsessing over the Bee Gees’ album, Spirits Having Flown. (One of the greatest albums ever written).

The percussion element of the song is something we worked on for a long time and the drums were recorded in our room at Free Energy Device studios. We set up two microphones in front of the kit and just went for it, not really knowing what we would end up with. 

Much of the guitar and Nick’s vocals were recorded in Nick's home studio.

Our plan was to get rich and famous off this record and then do our second album with a full symphony orchestra. But in the meantime, we wanted to make something as big and bold as the orchestral disco hits we love, so we had to add a synth orchestra after the track was essentially finished.

Two Parts Of A Broken Heart

This beautiful, soulful love song, the last music Nick Weaver ever composed, could be up there with the great ballads of our time! It’s unapologetically heart-wrenchingly romantic, evoking the pain of fraught, but ideal, love.

It started out differently in mood, melody and lyrics. Nick Weaver had named it Love Is Made, composing a deliberately sentimental piece, almost a send-up of the romantic genre. He asked his close friend Simon Relf, [guitarist and founder of The Tambourine Girls] to collaborate, add a section and sing it as a duet with him. It worked! Both agreed this was no ordinary song concept - they had something special and vowed to develop it further.

During 2020, while Nick and Nicholas [Nick] Meredith were working on the Salmon Brothers album, Simon and Nick were regularly sending each other files, even discussing this song on their car phones.

Then, the tragic news that rocked everyone who knew him – Nick was diagnosed with a rare and vicious form of bowel cancer in February 2021. Nevertheless, passionate about what this composition should become, he urged Simon to join him at his home studio to keep working on it. Over these critical weeks they forged on. Simon recalls those precious sessions as the beginning of the toughest period of his life.

But that struggle against time spurred on their creative energy. As the track evolved, Nick changed the title to Two Parts Of A Broken Heart, a name he couldn’t believe had never been used before, but now suited the newly formed song perfectly.

It’s an ethereal but powerful soundscape with Nick’s guitar and synth imagining falling stars, Nicholas Meredith’s superb drumming evoking a gentle heartbeat, accompanied by the glorious, sensual strains of Karl Laskowski’s sax.

In the worst of times, they had produced one of the sweetest and superbly romantic ballads imaginable!

To Nick’s repeated verse, “Hold on tight we’ll never make it alone  / The two of us have only one shadow / Joined together in the dark / Two parts of a broken heart / Two parts of a broken heart.”, Simon wrote the words “You know I lied when I said I could give you up / The truth will fall like raindrops to the floor / Every time that I think I can give no more / You come in and find it woman / What we’re fighting for.” … “I’ll take a chance that no-one is around me / The sweetest thing that I’ve never been told / I’m going to dance while you misunderstand me / Spoken words are silver / But unspoken words are gold.”

When Richard Belkner completed the mix, he sent it to Nick’s mother, Helen. While she listened intently to the song for the first time walking her dog in the park, she stumbled across a glittery red object in the shape of a heart lying right before her on the grass. Extraordinarily it was broken in two parts! She now keeps the two pieces with a photo in her handbag.

Coming Up For Air

Nick Weaver was frequenting harbour beaches from when he was a toddler, learning to swim and ride the waves at an early age, so it’s no wonder that his lyrics feature the power and sensuality of water. In that context, he writes about the aftermath of unrequited love, the fear of letting go again, only to be hurt.  “I keep my distance / Working on my powers of resistance”. But the pull of a new or renewed relationship is exhilarating, seeing the object of his desires is overwhelmingly pleasurable, akin to the sensation of capturing air after swimming under water.

Breath is life and he’s “choking on holding back”. Like the tides though, this resistance ebbs and flows. Denying his feelings and putting up a front, “There’s nothing colder than my shoulder / Except the water that I wade into without you.” serves only to weaken his reserve. He confesses:- “I tell my friends I play hard to get / But when I see you / It’s like coming up for air.”

Coming Up For Air is the first song the duo composed, from 2019 to its evolvement in late 2020. It’s a track they’re understandably very proud of. 

Both Nicks were in the room together, Weaver doing a happy little dance, while Richard Belkner completed the final analogue mix which was, interestingly, performed in real time. Analogue tape effects and Karl Laskowski’s beautifully toned flute produce the washy sounds that evoke the movement of water and breathing.

Nick Meredith’s brilliant drums, percussion and keyboard along with Weaver’s masterful bass and guitar lend great depth and fullness to the music. When renowned guitarist Seb Bartels slid into the Salmon’s studio he worked his magic, producing the swelling guitar solo enhanced by what they laughingly referred to as his “270 pedals”. While Nick Weaver’s vocals are suggestive of Prince, The Bee Gees, The Doors and Michael Jackson, the style and sound produced are distinctively and superbly SALMON BROTHERS.

‘More To Love’ is out now on Dot Dash / Remote Control Recordings. You can listen to/buy the album here.