Salt Collective

French songwriter-guitarist Stéphane Schück’s international collaborative project, The Salt Collective, is releasing the follow-up to their critically acclaimed 2023 album debut, Life. Their second full-length release, A Brief History of Blindness, is a widescreen exploration of hope, memory, and resilience that features contributions from Aimee Mann, Mike Mills (R.E.M.), Andy Partridge (XTC), and Matthew Caws (Nada Surf) among others (writing credits and list of featured performers below). A Brief History of Blindness is being released on 12” LP vinyl, CD, digital download and streaming services by Propeller Sound Recordings November 21.

While the Salt Collective’s first outing was recorded remotely with many vocalists and instrumentalists working separately on multiple continents at different times, A Brief History of Blindness features the core musicians gathered in the same space interacting together in real time. The bulk of the music was laid down by Rob Ladd (The Connells) on drums, Gene Holder (The dB’s) on bass, Stéphane Schück on guitars & sound design, Mitch Easter (Let’s Active) on guitars, and Wes Lachot on organ, piano, and Nord. These full-band sessions took place at the Fidelitorium (Kernersville, NC), with other work at Studio Ferber (Paris), and various home studios. The album was produced by Chris Stamey and mastered by Dave McNair.

The first single, “In the Shadow of the Moon,” pairs the voices of Mike Mills and Lynn Blakey (Tres Chicas, Let’s Active) in a lush and evocative duet inspired by the 2024 solar eclipse that conjures both cosmic mystery and quiet personal reflection. Mike: “It’s always a joy to hear Lynn sing, and getting to sing with her on a song as good as this one was a real pleasure.” Blakey and Mills’s harmonies float above cellos, trumpets, and flutes, creating a stirring chamber-pop soundscape that sets the tone for the album’s overall aesthetic.

“Waiting for the End of Time” was co-written by Schück, Chris Stamey (dB’s), and Andy Partridge, and features Jason Falkner (Jellyfish, The Grays) on lead vocals and a sweeping, cinematic arrangement that includes saxophone and cello. Andy, who also cowrote “You Swallowed the Sun,” tells us: “This collaboration happened in a dream. A few emails and Zooms. Suddenly we are writing. Next thing I know there’s a great-sounding album, and I’m involved! Like we made a genie jump from a bottle.” Aimee Mann brings haunting focus to the elegiac “The Waiting Game,” and appears again on a riveting duet with Stamey on the album closer, “All the Rage.” 

Matthew Caws, another central voice in the Collective, shines on three tracks, notably the melodic, euphoric “Cloud to Cloud” and the soaring “How We Breathe,” alongside Blakey and guitarist Kimberley Rew (The Soft Boys, Katrina & the Waves). “By very fortunate coincidence, I was attending a family reunion in North Carolina just two hours from Winston-Salem on the very weekend they were recording some songs for their sophomore album, including “Cloud to Cloud,” one I’d helped write. I drove to the Fidelitorium Sunday morning and minutes after saying some hellos, I was handed a guitar just before the red “record” light switched on. I stayed for a few magical hours and then drove back to the reunion.”

With songs such as the string-quartet-embellished, empathetic “So Sad (Don’t Let Go)” (also sung by Caws) and the cathartic, Pink Floyd-ish grandeur of “The Quickening Sky,” featuring both vocalist Django Haskins (The Old Ceremony) and a lead guitar conversation between Easter and Shück, the album feels both intimate and expansive. It’s the sound of artists finding clarity together—even if only briefly—before the world pulls them apart again.

While the collaborations that produced these compositions cross continents and oceans—from France to North Carolina to England to California—the songs are all powerfully united by Schück’s lyric vision and Stamey’s masterful production, which blends power-pop clarity with chamber-pop nuance. Stéphane’s background as a physician and overcoming a life-threatening disease once again informs the album’s themes, investigating human frailty with warmth and curiosity. “These songs are rooted in personal experience, but they belong to all of us now,” Schück says. “They’re about how we see, how we miss, how we heal.” 

Stamey adds, “Stéphane’s often elegant, sometimes dissonant, sometimes fiery chord progressions and riffs seemed to spark collaboration in all of us, cowriters and players alike. I think that this inspired an astonishing variety in the album tracks. And his constant enthusiasm for what we found together was the driving force behind it all.” As Partridge said: “All did good, as you can hear. Can’t quite reach to pat myself on the back.”

Themes of perception, loss, and resilience are threaded through the album, shaped by Schück’s life experience as an observer of human fragility. “These songs began as questions I was asking myself,” he notes, “but they found their voice through this group—this Collective.”  

The zeitgeist that produced these songs also informed the cover art. In creating the artwork for the album, the band used original photos taken by Stéphane Schuck that were carefully controlled and manipulated via generative AI as part of a statement about the “uncanny valley” dislocation of our modern times. it was a decision BECAUSE of the way it seems clearly unreal. 

A Brief History of Blindness is a striking testament to what can happen when great musical minds orbit under the spell of the same creative gravity. And this time, for a little while, they were all in the same constellation. Caws: “It’s an honor to be part of this extraordinary collection of people, all unique flavors but with a mutual affection for impressionistic pop.”