Sonic Spontaneity

by Marcel Feldmar











You go down to your favorite record store with a specific purchase in mind or perhaps a certain item you are hoping to find. As soon as you walk in the door your mind goes blanker than a cassette that has gotten a bit too intimate with a magnet, and you find yourself helplessly flipping through the bins of vinyl, the racks of CDs and the boxes of 7" singles, hoping to see something that will ignite your musical memory. When this happens to me, more often than not I end up heading home with a handful of music I've never heard of before.

This is where the packaging becomes important. This is where my eyes decide what to feed my ears. The art, the name of the band, the song titles and sometimes even the name of the record label come into play. What follows are some of the musical mistakes, marvels and mysteries I have uncovered.

One of the better discoveries was Swell, a group of musicians who have been an inspiration to me since 1990. It was in a Denver loft space between the rusting train tracks and streets where wild dogs roamed that the revolving, convoluted, surreal, swirled wisdom of David Freel and the sparse, deadbeat, offbeat, psychodelicate, heart-touched rhythms of Sean Kirkpatrick's drums first touched my ears like a sonic switchblade: wift and deep and oh so smooth. I had never heard of Swell, but one day I was at a record store looking for some music. Looking for nothing in particular, I was just scanning the racks of cassettes. Back and forth, up and down, carrying around five or six possibilities and knowing I only had enough money to buy one--putting three tapes back, picking four more up--and then I see it. The word Swell filling the spine of a tape. Nothing else. No numbers, no label, nothing but the word. That was my first reason to buy that tape rather than any of the other nine. The cover art was the second reason. It had no words, just the black and white image of two babies--one pouting and the other with a maniacal grin--floating through the clouds in big chairs. Surreal. It was not much to go on, but I bought the tape. And now? Five years, two CDs, one tape, two 7" singles and one concert later, Swell remains solidly placed within my own top ten.






Naturally we're just gushing with superlatives for the debut waxing from the Bay Area's (well, their bio says they currently reside "somewhere between San Fransisco, Chicago and Spain") Swell. Light, breezy, kinda T. Rex-y guitars and big, crunching living-room drums reverberate with all the ambience and homey charm of a studio built in a Quonset hut; they're a little like a kids' band dancing around the bunkbeds, but these guys have grown bigger and learned how to play a lot, while not growing up too much. Modest in means, genuine in emotion and attitude (what's that?), at last we are proud to report another band with enough mop-shaking Beatle-ish strums and cardboard-box drums to rival even the Sex Clark Five. Crafting delicate and thoughtful songs out of simple chords like if fIRE HOSE were comprised of three genial Ed Crawfords, Swell is the kind of band you just can't help but like; even though we don't know any of them personally, we feel as though we already know they re great guys. Some of the greatest music of all time has been made surrounded by garden tools, basketball hoops and cat-carriers, and somewhere inside Swell's sound is that very hard, solid kernel of greatness we'd gladly sift through sandstorms of demo tapes to find.



This re-release of a 1990 debut has great acoustic on many of its tracks. It's pretty eclectic, with heavier, Tool-ish tunes like "Sick Half of a Church," and lighter grooves such as "Love You All." Sean Kirkpatrick lays down some solid beats on the kit, and the overall feel is very polished, professional and smooth. Maybe too smooth, but for a debut (albeit a re-release), this is good stuff. Definitely worth a listen.

- Cheryl Bowles