Buried in MONA, Ben was an art installation chasing his musical muse

A little more than three months into his time inside MONA, Salter spent two complete days writing and recording the songs for new album Twenty-One Words For Loss.

“All these songs started coming out,” he said. “For whatever reason, I wrote down 21 words for loss and then filled page after page with lyrics. I decided all the songs had to be short and that enabled me to get the ideas out, to focus on one verse or one motif and then move onto the next thing.”

Twenty-One Words For Loss combines Salter’s rich, distinctive voice with an almost stream-of-consciousness honesty. The sombre mood of Departure, a more upbeat, summery feel on Losing and the heavier rock ‘n’ roll edge to Destitution creates an overall sense of never sitting with one mood for too long. Some tracks run less than a minute, none of them are more than a couple of minutes long.

For a performer who has played thousands of shows over more than two decades and early on made his living as a busker, Salter thrived in the strange confines of MONA, where time somehow fades away among the weird and wonderful spectacles on display.

“Around the corner from where my studio was set up there was a bottle smashing machine that very slowly nudged bottles towards the edge of a shelf,” Salter said.

“Every day there was more people watching bottles smashing than watching me and that made me realise [that] most people aren’t into music quite the same way as me. I loved it, the spectacle of bottles falling off a shelf was more interesting for heaps of people than watching someone perform.”

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Salter’s new album is his third in as many years. Prior to COVID-19 he completed a six-month overseas tour, playing a show every two days. Earlier this year My Heart is in the Wrong Place, a song he wrote for Vika and Linda Bull, was the lead single on their new album, The Wait. Now, like so many other artists, he’s waiting for touring to again become a normal part of Australia’s ravaged entertainment industry.

“I’ve been lucky,” he says. “I managed to get over to Melbourne when restrictions were eased just before Christmas last year and I’ve been to South Australia twice, but like everyone, you announce (shows) with optimism and then cancel them. Without the MONA thing I would have been screwed, so I’m looking forward to going back, which I’m doing later this year.”

Source: | This article originally belongs to smh.com.au

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