I mentioned Luminous Kid in passing on Tuesday as the Swedish songwriter is about to head out on tour in early 2021 (Covid permitting of course) supporting the excellent Icelandic musician Axel Flóvent and fellow Swede Plàsi. It’s just such a lovely line-up, and I’ll hope for some type of miracle that will allow me to get to one of the gigs – Amsterdam would be cool, but Prague would be even better.
Of course we’ve featured him before, when he released a thoughtful single and video entitled ‘The Gutter of our Ecstasy’. And similar to that song, new release ‘Velvet Meadow’ was written and inspired when on his travels to Colombia that we wrote about last time.
I wouldn’t normally quote so much from an artist, but I like the story behind the song.
“I went up to a statue of Holy Mary overlooking the mountain village to write songs every morning, and found this cute soft melody and picking pattern and started to improvise lyrics to it. I wrote the song in an hour and giggled throughout the process from the contrast of the sweet melody to the graphic nature of the lyrics. Halfway through the writing process a Colombian lady came up to me asking if I was singing songs about Jesus, to which I replied "Si, señora". The sound of crickets present throughout the song was recorded at the spot where it was written, I wanted to perpetuate the atmosphere and energy from this magic spot and bring it with me into the track."
That’s so nice of course, and indeed it is a sweet melody, a ‘ditty’ almost that will happily just float around your head. And short too, at not much more than 2 minutes, as if Luminous Kid is just happy to make his simple musical and lyrical point and then move on.
As above, the lyrics seem a bit graphic (rather than explicit) just in case a sweet old Colombian lady happens to ask you to explain it, although to be honest I can’t quite pick up all the words.
Luminous Kid feels like a very natural songwriter, and I can imagine he’ll perform the song on tour with a big smile on his face as he remembers the inspirations behind it.
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