A confession. I’m sick of seeing people post pictures—just the cover art—of ten albums that are them on an audio plate without any explanation.

That shits me.

It shits me because great music enters our lives at different times and, therefore, means different things to different people, and I want to know the stories.

With that in mind, I’m going to write a few short, sharp blog posts whenever I can be bothered explaining when some of the great music I love entered my life.

I’ve set a few ground rules, though.

I’m a Melbournian. Make that a North-of-the-Yarra Melbournian. Not only that I’m a North-of-the-Yarra Melbournian who has a sister (Camille Deane) with a recorded and unreleased album. (It’s gorgeous music, but Camille recorded it in Berlin a decade ago and shelved it. Don’t get me started.) More to the point I’m a North-of-the-Yarra Melbournian with a brother (Tim Deane) who is in so many bands I’ve lost count. More to the tip of the point I’m a North-of-the-Yarra Melbournian with one kid who plays a mean guitar and bass and another who is learning to play drums and cello.

In other words, I’m a hopeless music snob and will, therefore, on this occasion, speak only of Melbourne music. And by Melbourne music I mean music either made by Melbournians or recorded in Melbourne by cultural refugees from godforsaken places like, say, Sydney.

Still with me? Good.

Let me set the scene. If life was a golf course, I’d currently be playing the back nine and struggling to both stay on the fairway and reach the green. (I hate golf, by the way. Fucking hate it.) The point I’m trying to make is this: when I reached my forties and started hacking my way around the back nine of life, I noticed that it was a time when things started to break for people that I knew.

I saw marriages break. I saw families break. I saw careers break.

And then I broke.

I woke up one morning, walked out the front door and fell over. Couldn’t get up.

It was a stroke.

A great many things happened after the stroke. Boring stuff I won’t go into. And weird shit. For instance, for a while all I wanted to eat was tinned fruit. And, having grown up in the Goulburn Valley, I hate tinned fruit.

Another thing that happened was this: I wanted to listen to music, but couldn’t stand singing.

Easy, I thought. Having had a major fling with jazz in my twenties I went back to Miles Davis. Beautiful. Miles is a genius. But he ain’t from North or South of the Yarra, so enough about Miles.

Then, I strayed from Miles and started listening to Cam Butler’s Save My Soul.

And I couldn’t stop listening.

I didn’t know Cam. Still don’t. I’ve seen him play in various bands, including Ron Peno and the Superstitions (disclosure: my brother plays in the Superstitions, too), but there was something about this album that cracked me open and sewed me back together again.

It was instrumental and cinematic, folk and electric, classical and contemporary. And it was emotional. Deeply emotional. And it was a salve to my heart.

I don’t know if the album saved my soul, but it saved something.

Not only that, the record’s tracks, which are loping, elegiac affairs, are illustrated by a suite of five stunning music videos that I’d highly recommend you watch. They’re below. Start with ‘Save My Soul’.

That’s all I have to say for now.