The pervasive and magnificent irony of Sean Nicholas Savage’s art, most recently and brilliantly expressed in “Other Life”, arises out of a painstaking and exhaustive process of introspection. Songs like Lonely Woman and More Than I Love Myself move like a curtain dropping over close communion with the beloved, invoking the stranger, the ultimately and avoidably impersonal. The archangel bereft of his fig-leaf.

We are all card-carrying members of the funhouse Savage describes, lost amongst the quivering boughs of Montreal, or along the arched brows of a deposed princess of darkest Russia, the reddest part of our heart. At home nowhere, but in the end settling down.

Savage remains the dark hearted king of clubs. In the songs of “Other Life” he loses his men, his women, and the shadows of a place he has never quite been. This album is a mirror that will never break, held far above us all, constant as the sky, saying: ‘Change. I will do nothing for you.’ Somewhere far below is the jaw of the man forever lost and forever losing himself ‑ Savage ‑ dancing with you through chattering teeth.