Roland Wälzlein has been making music under the Fish and Scale name out of Nuremberg with a biography that informs everything he writes. He survived a serious heart operation at six years old, and that early brush with mortality has threaded itself through his lyrics ever since. A later stint at a silent retreat shifted his understanding of life further still. The result is an artist whose press describes as independent folk with a mystical touch – an intense, slightly smoky voice, unusual song structures, and lyrics that reach toward something beyond the personal. “Letter from Paulus”, released in May, takes that instinct about as far as it can go: it’s a direct reimagining of 1 Corinthians 13, the Hymn to Love, one of the most enduring pieces of writing in human history.
The lyrical aspect speaks for itself – it’s inspired by arguably the greatest literature of all. But though the song already has powerful lyrical content, it doesn’t phone in the other elements. The gorgeous layers of intricately woven melodies are some of the most inspired in a while. Simplicity is the hardest thing to achieve in art, but here Roland Wälzlein manages to achieve it with poignant and deliberate melodies that essentially tell the side story next to the poetic lyrics – they give depth and add richness in a way that is second to none.
The source text is about the hollowness of human achievement when stripped of genuine compassion, which is a theme that doesn’t age. What Wälzlein has done is find a musical register that matches that weight without becoming heavy-handed about it. Former Atlantic Records A&R Wyatt Easterling called him a “rare and unique artist”, and on the strength of this track, it’s hard to argue with that.
