Dorset singer-songwriter Roo Panes today releases the video for his latest single ‘Sketches of Summer’, the fourth and purest track to be taken from his third album Quiet Man.
Roo is known for writing music with “a positive message” (Uncut) and new album Quiet Man is brimming with songs encouraging others, of seeing the good in people and also more introspective themes of self-love and growth. It’s an album about choosing to live life in the light and not giving into the dark.
New single ‘Sketches of Summer’ is perhaps the album’s gentlest and most beautiful example of the long-player’s overall enveloping feeling of warmth and happiness. It is also the most sonically representative of Roo’s state of mind when writing ‘Quiet Man’, a record he describes as coming from “a place of stillness, peace and contentment.”
He describes ‘Sketches Of Summer’ as “a summary of a particular window of summer. I wanted it to stay pretty vague and impressionist in style so I could capture the feeling of ‘sketches’ and conjure the nostalgia. I’d always had the texture of the single note piano and the muted guitar in my mind, and was eager to try that palette and create a world with minimal touch, a lot of it is thin single lines and not meaty chords.”
Managing to be both deeply romantic, yet unsentimental, ‘Sketches of Summer’ is an unapologetic, heartfelt and tender look at love in its simplest and most honest form. Roo’s gentle tones harmonise with the ethereal vocal of his sister and guest vocalist Deborah Panes over a honeyed piano melody and gently finger-plucked guitar.
“And the sweetest part of the day
Is when you stay a little longer than you say
And linger on in evening’s way.”
Quiet Man, from which ‘Sketches of Summer’ is taken, is Roo’s third album following Little Giant (2014) and Paperweights (2016). To date his music has been streamed over 173 million times via Spotify, Vevo and YouTube alone, with champions in the likes of Lauren Laverne (BBC 6 Music), Annie Mac and Phil Taggart (BBC Radio 1), Zane Lowe (Beats 1), Jo Whiley (BBC Radio 2) and Dermot O’Leary (BBC Radio 2).
‘Sketches of Summer’ was written by Roo Panes and recorded in Deep Litter Studios at Start Point, Devon and produced by Chris Bond, mixed by Boe Weaver and mastered by Tim Debney at Fluid Mastering. It is released as a digital single and features on the long-player Quiet Man, both are out now via CRC Records.
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