- The Queen Who Stole The Sky is the fifth full length release from singer-songwriter Sarah Mary Chadwick. Based in Melbourne and originally from New Zealand, Chadwick has a history of crafting raw and candid narrative songs that don’t shy away from emotionally ripping off the band-aid. The Queen Who Stole The Sky is no exception to this formula, but has a few quirks that separate Chadwick from her contemporaries.
Chadwick started her musical career in Wellington/Adelaide post-grunge outfit Batrider. After the band relocated to Melbourne where Chadwick now resides, she found a new voice in her first solo release Eating for Two in 2012 for Bedroom Suck Records, which, sonically, brought her candid and anguished vocal style to the forefront. This move paired her to tastemaker label Rice is Nice and eventually Sinderlyn, resulting in a gem of last year, Sugar Still Melts In The Rain.
That brings us to The Queen Who Stole The Sky, a collaboration between Chadwick and Melbourne City Council to create a body of work to be recorded in three months, on Melbourne Town Hall’s Grand Organ, the largest Grand Romantic organ in the Southern Hemisphere and an instrument one hundred and forty seven years of age. The result is a testament to the human voice and solo instrument relationship on both a grand and confessional scale; songs that Chadwick crafts for: “anyone who ever wanted a little bit more than what life had to offer them”. No better instrument could convey this than a relic of the past.
Tonally this release stays consistent across its eleven tracks. This is a project intended to bring a monolithic instrument into a modern context and it does this well, Chadwick never feels dwarfed by its enormousness, and in fact there is a symbiosis between them. This connection makes the themes of these numbers really pop out, like on Confetti where the organ jumps up an octave as Chadwick croons: “Go take twenty, no take five / Cause I’m running out of time / Have I ever just been kind? / My own interests on my mind / Like confetti not as bright / Like the dark but not at night.” The longing and solitude of these songs feel inseparable from the organ that inspired them: it’s cohesive and grandiose.
The Queen Who Stole The Sky, is a hard one to critique because it’s thematically and sonically consistent across its runtime. However, like the Grand Organ that kicked this project off, there is a feeling of scale and magnitude to this record. An ambitious project from an artist proving simplicity and power can come from strange places.
- Fraser Coker.