With each successive album, madcap Canadian singer-songwriter Sean Nicholas Savage introduces us to a new iteration of himself, with a new set of aesthetic parameters. 2018’s Screamo found the musician turning his attention to 70s soft-pop balladry, while its 2017 predecessor Yummycoma found him trying on a skeletal version of 80s radio rock; 2016’s Magnificent Fist was based around wonderfully bizarre takes on R&B, and so on. With his new album Life Is Crazy, released last Friday, Savage has undertaken an even more ambitious project: a piano-and-strings record inspired by Broadway balladry. A spiritual sequel to Please Thrill Me, the musical he wrote and performed in for 12 shows earlier this year, Life Is Crazy gives Savage a whole new vernacular with which to explore the themes that recur across his oeuvre.
One of Life Is Crazy’s highlights is “Mysteries,” a tortured, epic highlight of the album’s back half which sees Savage, over piano by Marcin Masecki and strings by Owen Pallett, singing about the ineffability of human connection. Today, The FADER is premiering Savage’s new live performance video of “Mysteries,” a perfectly theatrical black-and-white clip that, were it mounted onstage, could probably get Savage the T in his EGOT. Featuring Masecki on piano and filmed by Noah Triplett, it’s a sublime accompaniment to the world of Life Is Crazy. Watch “Mysteries” above, and listen/buy here.
