Photo by Kale Chesney“I’ve been really excited about this one ever since we wrote it,” says vocalist Malachi Graham, one half of Small Million with production whiz Ryan Linder. “‘Saintly’ came into being much more quickly than some of our previous songs, I suspect because they were exactly the words I needed to hear.”
Per usual, Linder sets the cinematic mood right out of the gate with a lethargically humming synth and Graham’s lyrics paint a melancholic scene, never failing to immediately transport you there, drinking “whiskey on the kitchen floor.”
“‘Saintly’ is a meditation on the idea that salvation doesn't come from another person,” Graham explains. “I damaged my vocal cords this winter, so I lost my voice right as I was starting to unravel my own codependent tendencies. This song is a prayer for turning back to yourself when you’re trapped in a cycle of self-sacrifice. It’s a reminder to myself that empathy without boundaries is self destruction.”
“My voice is all better now, by the way—and so are my boundaries,” she adds.
“Where a lot of our past work was originally recorded with plug-ins and then replicated on analog gear, I think this one is the first to have been entirely structurally composed and recorded with the same instrument, the smooth and sensual Moog Subsequent 37,” Linder describes. Recorded in his home studio this past spring, the duo then got a little mixing help from David Streit and mastering by Timothy Stollenwerk at Stereophonic Mastering on their first single since the release of the Young Fools EP last year.
“We’re looking forward to releasing several singles this year, without a larger release planned just yet,” Graham says.
