Our Song of the Day comes from award-winning emerging artists The Little Unsaid with Day is Golden, a deeply personal song that simply (and positively) expresses songwriter John Elliott’s journey through suffering – and eventual healing – with mental illness. It’s also the title of their UK concert tour (see dates below). The song features on their forthcoming new album ‘Selected Works‘, due for release on Reveal Records on May 18th, 2018.
About the song John says…
‘The resonance the song has with other people has magnified the meaning of it so much beyond my own personal reasons for writing it. After gigs, I’ve had so many beautiful open conversations with strangers about their personal struggles, things you wouldn’t normally imagine sharing on a night out. The song somehow seemed to open up this oddly uplifting dialogue around grief and trauma and things that can be so difficult for most of us to talk about.’
He also shot the video himself…
I shot the video at sunrise on St Agnes in the Isles of Scilly. It was a December morning, absolutely bloody freezing. We knew we didn’t want to make a traditional music video that would overcook the meaning in any way. When a song is that personal it’s a very delicate thing, applying any extra images or narrative to it seems totally wrong. We wanted something completely still, honest and simple that lets the song speak for itself, and leaves room for people to take whatever they want from it. So it’s one shot, one take, I just stood there and sang it to myself while the sun came up, and that was it.
John Elliott has been making strange noises and songs since the age of twelve. Rescuing an old PC from a trash heap and buying a £5 microphone with pocket money at a local Yorkshire toy shop, he set about making experimental music at home, layering up samples from films with his own instrumentation and vocals. These early recordings were then self-printed onto CD-Rs and sold to his school friends, enemies, even teachers. This imagination and DIY spirit has served him well ever since.
Elliott moved to London in 2010 to work in film and animation and would spend his nights making the first recordings as The Little Unsaid, playing all the instruments himself and orchestrating additional parts for a string section. After a couple of years, he took the plunge and left a steady job in order to tour, anywhere and everywhere, spending months at a time on the road sleeping on floors, in venues, in his car, endlessly crafting his songs and sound. Along the road, he has found lifelong friends, collaborators and importantly, a loyal and expanding audience.
Elliott’s hunger to tour has never ceased. In a world that can seem so fragmented, dark and lonely for many, The Little Unsaid’s music celebrates a sense of community built from shared joys and sorrows, and chasing this night after night with audiences has earned them a reputation for emotionally-charged performances.
Forming a four-piece band to record 2017’s acclaimed Imagined Hymns and Chaingang Mantras album, Elliott invited Radiohead / Johnny Greenwood producer Graeme Stewart to mix and the band’s career has been rapidly building momentum ever since. The Little Unsaid have since toured in Europe and won the Steve Reid InNOVAtion Award for boundary-pushing music which brought with it mentoring sessions with Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) and their first national radio plays.
Having heard and fallen in love with the music in 2017, Tom Rose of Reveal Records (home to Joan As Police Woman, Lau and Kris Drever) was invited to manage The Little Unsaid and has helped them compile this new album “Selected Works”, a career-to-date primer, a document of songs and recordings that might otherwise have been lost or overlooked.
2018 looks set to be the busiest year yet for The Little Unsaid as they finish writing and collaborating on new material in preparation for their next studio album. The Little Unsaid will play live shows starting in March 2018 in support of Day Is Golden and Selected Works.
John says… “We live for those moments where we’re all completely present, us and the audience, and something sparks between us that is somehow both stratospheric and deeply personal. The heartstrings shiver and the mind opens up and the fist thumps the floor to celebrate the unfathomable mayhem we all tumble around in together. This has been our fuel on these adventures and it’s always the reason we sit down to make new music and take it out into the world.’
The Little Unsaid – Day Is Golden Tour 2018
March
28th Manchester Gullivers
29th Glasgow Hug and Pint
30th Banchory Woodend Barn
31st Isle of Skye Aros
April
1st Inverness Eden Court
2nd Edinburgh Traverse Theatre
5th Sheffield Greystones
6th Thornton-Cleveleys Little Theatre
10th Bristol Wardrobe Theatre
11th Exeter Phoenix
12th Worcester Marrs Bar
13th London The Courtyard Theatre
15th Birmingham Kitchen Garden Café
Tickets from www.thelittleunsaid.com
The Little Unsaid are:
John Elliott – Vocals, Keys, Guitar, Programming
Tim Heymerdinger – Drums, Percussion, FX, Vocals
Mariya Brachkova – Bass, Moog, Vocals
Alison D’Souza– Viola, FX