Paddy Mann (AKA Grand Salvo) writes beautiful songs centred on simple, plaintive vocal melodies and echoic guitar motifs. There’s not much in their musical makeup that you haven’t heard before, making it easy to submit to their embrace.
But once he’s got you, Mann’s songs possess the ability to devastate by bringing us into contact with long-suppressed memories or gently chipping away at the ice wall we’ve erected. ‘Field of Flowers’ is representative of this characteristic, but it’s also an exception for how quickly the trauma at the heart of the song is revealed.
“I found you there in the cubicle, with your piece of glass/Lime green, though black at the edge where you had scored your arm.”
Following these two opening lines, ‘Field of Flowers’ relays the tale of a troubled girl Mann befriended as a child. He offers non-judgmental friendship, but eventually discovers her in the cubicle again, only this time she’s “so very cold”.
A chorus of women’s voices joins for the song’s relatively buoyant coda, which consists of the repeated lines, “Love is like the rain on a field of flowers / If there is a drought it just runs right off”.
Check out more underrated songs from the decade here.
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