Salt Ashes - Gold

Last month you may remember we introduced you to Brighton’s Salt Ashes putting her firmly in the Kate-Bush-brought-up-to-date-with-synths-and-a-hint-of-Ellie-Goulding camp, or something similar to that. If you’ve forgotten already then play catch up by clicking the link above.

Now you’re up to speed we can reveal this, a new song, from the sodium chloride burning lady. It hit the internet today and it’s called Gold. Fear not though, it’s not an ear bleeding horror show cover version of the Spandau Ballet ‘classic,’ but instead her own composition.

Imagine if you can the improbable event that Kate Bush had finally decided to make a comeback (oh hold on….), but she decided to throw out the Bulgarian folklore, renaissance musicians or strange literary reference points and instead remodelled herself for the iGeneration, straddling her grand piano on the X Factor, possibly dressed in artistically ‘revealing’ garments – but not the overtly sexual / virtually naked garb that the likes of Rihanna are prone to not covering their bodies with, but something a little more classy. This is very much what Gold sounds like. Of course what we've done there is provide a visual description rather than an audio one, but a picture speaks a thousand words doesn't it?

Now we fully understand that the words Kate Bush and X Factor don’t go hand in hand at all and that it’s likely that fans of Kate will be put off by the TV show reference and vice versa. But imagine if it did happen. Kate (Salt Ashes) would be surrounded by candles, lit by a single white spotlight, in the distance ladies dressed in black robes would dance like shadowy ghosts and at the end the camera would cut to Louis Walsh looking a little bit teary. A number 1 single would surely follow and the song would feature on a number of 'intimate' or 'romantic' moments in chick-flicks.

In the real world of course Salt Ashes is playing The Brunswick in Hove (basically a pub in the posh end of Brighton) on Wednesday 26 October, with more gigs to follow shortly. We don’t expect there to be any dancers, candles or Louis Walsh to make an appearance, but there’s still time for all that to happen - because fundamentally a well-written song is a well-written song whatever the context or style. In fact, imagine if you walked into a grotty seaside pub and heard someone singing and playing like this. That would be pretty stunning.

Gold by Salt Ashes