Underwater Waltz by Scott Gagner

When Scott Gagner’s family wanted to see the 2024 solar eclipse, he couldn’t help but notice that his friend’s Little Rock studio just so happened to fall in the path of totality. This celestial event is reflected in the suspended, liminal tone of Underwater Waltz, an album that creates a buffer of ambient beauty between the listener and the assaults of modern life.

Gagner is a zealot of melody, using it like a microdose to activate awareness of beauty in day-to-day life. “I wanted to strip away anything extra—words, voice, drums. Every decision on this record bows down to the primary melody.”

In the days leading up to the solar eclipse, piano, strings, and synthesizer were recorded and filmed live in Little Rock to capture the spontaneity and imperfections of the present moment. The 1930’s Lester upright piano, with its wooden creaks and pedal squeaks, was modified with a two-inch strip of felt where the hammers hit the strings, creating the record's signature tone of round, hollow notes, like heavy droplets falling on a pond.

The cover songs on Underwater Waltz prove that great melodies transcend genre. Rick James’ “Super Freak” may be an unlikely candidate for post-classical piano and strings, but in Gagner’s hands, the song’s haunting, dark melody emerges, freed from the original funk treatment, much like he exhumes the Psychedelic Furs’ melody in “The Ghost in You” from its 1980s production. The original Simon & Garfunkel “Bookends Theme” is only thirty seconds long, but Gagner adds a B-part, allowing it to linger and unfurl.

Gagner wrote the arrangements for the string trio at his home studio in Minnesota. Hearing that labor come to life in the capable hands of Respighi Prize-winning conductor-violinist Geoffrey Robson and his principal violist and cellist from the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra was the most memorable moment of recording for Gagner. On the album, the strings swell like sonic pillows, lifting the melodies higher, and cushioning them when they fall.

“I take the responsibility of being inside someone’s cranium very seriously.” Like the moment of the solar eclipse, Underwater Waltz feels singular and soothing, outside of normal time and space, where we are aligned, in touch with the cosmic scale of things, feeling both expansive and humbled.

Scott Gagner is a Minnesota-based songwriter, composer, and multi-instrumentalist. In addition to his minimalist piano work, he has also released six albums as a singer-songwriter, collaborating with members of Big Star, The Posies, R.E.M., The Attractions, Los Lobos, and Midlake. His songs and videos have been featured nationally on such platforms as USA Today, and locally on The Current.

scottgagner.com
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