SONG OF THE DAY Quilt – Padova

Boston-based four piece, Quilt released their third album ‘Plaza’ earlier this year and have just shared the second video from this LP.  Written by Quilt’s Shane Butler and directed by Christopher Good, ‘Padova’ is a deeply intimate and touching song written in Padova, Italy exploring a conversation that Shane Butler had with his mother after her passing.

The song is built upon a constant, gentle galloping beat that weaves in and out of soft melodies and reflective vocals and the accompanying video is full of interesting imagery which you can watch above.  In an interview with NPR Music, Shane Butler talked extensively about his experience and what led him to write this song:

“This song was written shortly after my mother passed away. It was written in Padova, Italy on a night where we were scheduled to perform there in the courtyard of a beautiful villa-like building on the outskirts of the city. There were old ceramic walls, chandeliers, Italian vines and horses on the periphery of the property; it was idyllic to say the least. During this period of time, after my mother had passed, I would talk to her every day. Whether it was in imagination or in spirit doesn’t really matter; my experience was the same. That night in Padova my mother and I talked for a long time as I took a walk around the property. I then happened to come across an old busted up guitar in a giant wooden room with a chandelier in it, I tuned it to something that would work, and this song came out.

“The experience of my mother’s death has not only been of grief, as our culture often solely represents death being. But, in my experience, death has taken on infinite voices. There are voices of beauty, melancholy, humor, rejuvenation and freedom located in this experience. When talking with Christopher Good about making this video we talked about making a representation of this experience that involved some of these other aspects of death. Christopher has an incredible eye and mind to make abstract narratives, which is what we decided to go with for this video. This scene is only a detail on the vast canvas of representing life’s transition. As there is no finality to this experience, no static way to understand it, we chose to use abstraction, movement, color and the elements to play with the ideas at hand.

“Whether you get down with ‘soul’ business or not I’d like to leave with this quote of Kahlil Gibran’s that I read shortly after my mother passed. I think it is very beautiful and maybe provides a moment to reflect on another possible voice of death:

“‘Death is an ending to the son of
The earth, but to the soul it is
The start, the triumph of life.'”

Latest album, ‘Plaza’ is out now and can be found here