Sally Seltmann - 'Harmony To My Heartbeat'
Sally Seltmann was seemingly everywhere in 2007/2008. After near a decade of playing music under the moniker of New Buffalo, two studio albums in
The Last Beautiful Day (2004) and
Somewhere, Anywhere (2007), Seltmann's music was reaching an audience far outside the tiny Empress Hotel that she once debuted in. In 2007 she won the APRA Breakthrough Songwriter Award, was nominated for an ARIA and could be heard internationally on a rich swathe of TV shows like Greys Anatomy and The Office (US).
And then there was
THAT iPod song. The Seltmann penned tune '1234' found a home with North American labelmate and friend Feist, who gave it a spit and polish, changed some lyrics around and released it on her
The Reminder album. Which - thanks largely to the song being featured in an iPod Nano ad - went gangbusters, turning Feist into a pop heavyweight. Meanwhile Seltmann basked from afar in the windfall and international acknowledgement of her craft, not to mention a renewed interest in New Buffalo internationally.
Which brings us here to the next chapter. Co-produced with Francois Tetaz (Architecture in Helsinki, Lior) 'Harmony To My Heartbeat' is the first single from Seltmann's forthcoming album - and first under her own name - due in early 2010. As with most Seltmann affairs it's a piano based number, but this time with a heady movement towards pop classicism rather than modernity. Indeed, there's always been a slightly retro vibe about Seltmann's world view, if not completely on record, but here that's changed into full blown chamber pop.
Gone are some of the more loop-based ideas bubbling underneath previous New Buffalo songs and in its place is the more fully-realised, Phil-Spector-reverb-on-the-drums-style widescreen sound. And while it's another uplifting, dreamy tune from Seltmann, as always it's her distinctive voice that tells the story; an ever present unsurity in her lilt that translates as something both detached and intimate, confessional and blasé, strong but humble. There's not many like it. Oh and the chord change with 30 seconds to go is a killer.
It's available through iTunes on November 24th.