With ‘Yesterday’s Grace’, The Easter Parade continues to craft a sound that feels like it belongs to a different era, one where memories unfold like flickering black-and-white film reels, and every note carries the weight of a story waiting to be told. As the second single from the upcoming EP ‘Raindrops on the Lens’, this latest offering deepens bandleader Matt Steven’s evocative musical world, blending introspective lyricism with a cinematic sonic landscape.
Recorded primarily at Indigo Scala, Steven’s personal studio in Northamptonshire, the track finds additional depth with a poignant piano arrangement captured in a rain-soaked Parisian studio. Strings weave through the song’s delicate framework, while the final mix by Daryll McFayden (Biffy Clyro, Susan Boyle) and mastering by Pete Maher (U2, Nick Cave, The Pixies) bring a timeless polish to its sound.
Musically, ‘Yesterday’s Grace’ embraces a nostalgic grandeur, echoing the storytelling finesse of artists like Nick Cave, Ron Sexsmith, and Tom Waits, yet maintaining an identity that is uniquely its own. There is a sense of haunted beauty in the song’s orchestration, where the delicate push and pull of longing and release are mirrored in its sweeping melodies. The Easter Parade has an uncanny ability to capture moments of quiet reflection and turn them into something cinematic and enduring; music that is as much about emotion as it is about sound.
For Steven, ‘Yesterday’s Grace’ is deeply personal, born from a period of contemplation about a figure who left an indelible mark on his life. He cites the influence of Sergio Leone’s ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ and a visit to New York City, a place that felt like it had stepped straight out of the silver screen. These inspirations bleed into the track’s mood, evoking a sense of places and people frozen in time, where love, loss, and the search for meaning linger in the spaces between the notes.
‘Yesterday’s Grace’ serves as another compelling chapter in The Easter Parade’s unfolding narrative, one that continues to blur the lines between music and memory, past and present, dream and reality. For those who find beauty in melancholy and storytelling in melody, this is a song that will stay with you long after the final chord fades.
