Good to see Paddy release something so soon after the excelleng death. Look forward to hearing the whole album.

same.

It's out now, right?

Apart from being a guy with a beard and an acoustic guitar, Grand Salvo is nothing like Sam Beam.

I agree.

i don't. so ner.

Well you're stupid.

YOU ARE.

Fight.

Ok.

According to the review's similarity signposts (honey rich voices, simple tunes, gentle guitar, naturalistic singing) - and looking past the beard, which Grand Salvo doesn't have at the moment anyway - Grand Salvo's music is then also the same as Gillian Welch, M Ward, SoKo, Low, Robin Pecknold, Bon Iver, Mark Kozalek, Natalie Merchant...any dude/ette with a guitar singing quietly.

Not to mention the fact that Grand Salvo's music is based in deconstruction and has more to do with classical compositions than the lazy ''jammy'' pop songs Beam has been squeezing out for the last few years. Plus it sucks that you say Grand Salvo is Australia's answer to anything. Still, Grand Salvo released music before Sam Beam ever did. So is Beam America's answer to Grand Salvo?

i understand what you're saying, marcus.

but to my ears, there are similarities between their voices, and when you strip back their compositions to the basic element of guitar and voice (as this track does) then i detect similarities in the songwriting. you mightn't agree, but that's cool.

(ps. i hope you were able to realise that the beard comment was made in jest).

paddy - radder than sam beam. but i still like adm's review.

i'm just saying if you're going to compare them on not much more than the basis of two guys with soft voices playing sparse folk music then you'd need to include pretty much everyone who's grown their fingernails and picked up a porkpie hat from the last 100 years.

when i think about it, i don't even know how you can compare the voices: beam sings exclusively in whispery tones while grand salvo's voice is never anything but a pure note.

i'm getting a bit too discussion boardy, but...it just annoys me when accomplished Australian artists are - in my view, lazily - compared retrogressively to international ones, not least inferior ones.

like i said, it's about more than just ''two guys with soft voices playing sparse folk music''. i noted specific similarities (many of which were on a gut level, and therefore difficult to adequately articulate), which i found it hard to overlook.

since i came to grand salvo much later than i did iron & wine, the chronology is purely personal.

but anyway. though i think your points are fair and valid, i stand by what i wrote.

tell me the similarities listed in the review outside of soft voices and acoustic guitar...

or just leave it at that.

Because this is going nowhere.

i'm hoping for an arm wrestle actually.

yeah, it is going nowhere. i've said my piece.

Bravo Marcus - well said. I get where you're coming from Adam.. I think occasionally Paddy and Sam have a similar tone in their voice, and can understand that some of their songs could be seen as vaguely alike in mood and theme... But beyond that.. they're really different! To see that perhaps you have to be a songwriter or musician or someone that listens to music in a certain way (the songwriting as opposed to the tones, production etc). Australia doesn't need to answer to anyone. We just need some confidence, and for journos to stop the comparing with overseas artist thing. We shit all over the states and europe... so overrated already.

i wholly agree with adam, i think the two artists are similarly doing interesting things to rework the folk idioms of their respective homelands.

How big are their dicks, and what shape? Comparisons, people.

sounds closer to paddy casey to me!?! =)

great song, does anyone know if this has a vinyl release?