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The
Vibe
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 Swelled
Heads by Johnny Walker (Black)
Rating: 4 Magic Mushrooms
"I think about everything / and nothing's what I learn" --Swell, "What I Always Wanted"
San Francisco-based rockers Swell are spiritual brothers to those twisted desert dwellers The Meat Puppets, tripping out on their own brand of neo-psychedelic cactus-rock. On this, their third long player, the trio (David Freel-guitar, vocs, Monte Vallier, bass, Sean Kirkpatrick, drums) conjure up a laidback classic, a slow-burner whose full effects are best absorbed while sitting on the front porch with a cup of peyote tea on the kind of languid summer's afternoon that the music here is so evocative of.
From the groovy cover art (courtesy of drummer Kirkpatrick) to the sharp production of former Ultra Vivid Scene mainman Kurt Ralske and on down the line, Too Many Days Without Thinking aims to transport the listener to states of mind other than that of the mundane workaday one of blinkered, unquestioning servility. The first two tracks here, "Throw The Wine" and "What I Always Wanted," set the mood for the rest of the album, and are as impressive a duo as I've heard on any album this year. The former is a medium-paced rocker with a typically crashing chorus which revolves around the phrase "I wanted to leave / cause all the freaks were gone," encapsulating the Swell ethic of a cranky indifference to the "straight" world and its concerns, the solipsism of the stoner. The latter, perhaps the best song on the album, is a psychedelic ballad anchored by a circular acoustic guitar riff and Kirkpatrick's always inventive and sympathetic drumming, and goes even further in its dream of a world apart: "Now I'm failing to come down / what I always wanted" Freel softly intones, lost in an existential pipe dream.
It's a gamble leading off an album with songs as strong as "Throw The Wine" and ""What I Always Wanted," setting a standard which for many bands would be too high to maintain for 40-plus minutes. But for the most part here, Swell pull it off, thanks to Meat Puppetsy, acoustic-electric desert-rockers like "Make Mine You" and the jaunty, off-kilter "Fuck Even Flow," which, with its chorus of "this is the best line / don't wait for some gladness to close your eyes," could be interpreted as a message to perpetually furrowed-brow Pearl Jam frontman Eddie "Even Flow" Vedder. "At Lennie's" returns to the mescalined magnificence of "What I Always Wanted," while the similarly ethereal "When You Come Over" features some psychedelic lead guitar straight out of the back catalogue of magnificent '60s Cali-rockers Love. And surely the warped members of the Meat Puppets themselves would love "Bridgette, You Love Me," a Manson-esque (as in Charlie, not Marilyn) acoustic ode to a "police dog" which features the immortal lines:
we're living on my paper route,
it's alright
Overall, Too Many Days Without Thinking
is an album which indeed does the creepy-crawl on your psyche, rather
than unsubtly bashing you over the head as so many rock bands do in
these black and white times. The current days of frenetic pre-millennium
tension don't readily reward rock bands whose work takes its time to
sink in, but the music of the aptly named Swell does just that, moving
in waves, slowly and steadily, aiming not for a quick hit, but a cumulative
saturation of the skull. By the time the album ends with the trancey
and ethereal "Sunshine Everyday," you'll ready to join the boys
on the front porch for some of what they're drinking. |
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San Franciscan band returns with Beggars debut To many, San Francisco is the place of Rice-A-Roni,Cable Cars and Tony Bennett's misplaced heart. The City By TheBay however is actually all about pioneering spirits, The GoldRush, Alcatraz, and the gabled, bay-windowed houses that survivedthe massive 1906 quake are all testaments to the strength and character that pervades the Northern Californian City. Swell,comprised of David Freel, Monte Vallier and Sean Kirkpatrick could be the product of no other environment. Formed in the summer of '87, Swell quickly rose to prominence in the San Francisco music scene. A series of independently released and promoted albums "Swell" and "Well &?"on their own pSycho-sPecific Records in the early 1990s captured the ears of music lovers around the world. Before long part of the band were busking throughout Europe with all their belongings stashed in "a piece of shit Renault", while the others were busy promoting their records back home. Their hard work and determination eventually lead to a John Peel Session and a minor role in the Griffin Dunne motion picture "The DukeOf Groove". The Swell tide eventually washed up an internationalrecording deal with the then nascent def american label  (now
american recordings). The band's major debut "41",released in 1994,
was heralded a critical success by such tastemakersas as Melody Maker
("one of the best surprises I've had in along while"), Alternative Press
("Swell write songsfull of depth, with a steady rhythm and a swirling
guitar sound to put the rest of those psychedelic cyborgs to shame.")and
The Houston Press ("One of the very few albums that Ifully expect to
be pulling out of the pile ten years from now...")."Too Many Days Without Thinking", titled quite literally from "too many days without thinking of anything else but this fucking record", is the result of over a years worth of experimentation. "We didn't wantto make the same record again" explains bassist Vallier. "We knew we wanted to go in a slightly different direction. We wrote songs and re-wrote songs and recorded a lot and re-recorded songs and chopped songs up into different parts. We did a lot of experimentation just trying to push ourselves." A Swell record is similar in nature to its marine namesake. It starts with a barely detectable current and slowly evolves into a bursting and heaving emotional torrent. "We do all the writing on tape, we don't jam." says Vallier. "David comes in with an acoustic guitar, a set of chords,a vocal melody and a couple of words and just slaps down ideas on tape. We then start to add bass, electric guitar, keyboard parts and drums and start to play off each other. It evolves from everybody's collaborative effort." "Too Many Days Without Thinking" was started in the band's San Francisco home studio, which had given birth to all three previous recordings. Looking for new inspiration mid-way through the record the members headed for Los Angeles and then ended up completing the recording in New York. "Environment is very important on Swell records", exclaims Vallier, "that's why we couldn't finish the record in Los Angeles. That environment was wrong and we didn't know that until we went there. New York was awesome, it pulled it all together for us." It was in New York that Swell enlisted the help of Ultra Vivid Scene mainman Kurt Ralske. "Kurt was our sounding board, we brought the songs to New York and he helped us re-record them. He would make comments like 'yeah, I think that's great', or 'I think that you should try this' so we pretty much had everything thought out but he was the objective outsider who would tell us yes or no." The album, enhanced visually by drummer Sean Kirkpatrick chalk drawings, includes the lead single "The Trip" a self described love song that has nothing to do with travel and everything to do with a particular style of woman and "Throw The Wine" an "allegorical, metaphorical kind ofthing that doesn't really have anything to do with religion but it's kind of like if Jesus at the Last Supper instead of offering the wine and saying this is my blood and getting ready to be crucified, just took the bottle of wine and smashed it against the wall and said 'Fuck You I'm going to live, I'm not dying for you'." The band are currently promoting "Too Many DaysWithout Thinking" in southwestern United States with homegrown support act Treble Charger, including a showcase date at SXSW. They will then travel to Europe and return to North America in the late spring for what will likely be a string of Canadian dates. Swell "Too Many Days Without Thinking"(BBQ-CD-187) will be available in stores April 8th,is marketed by Beggars Banquet and distributed in Canada by KOCHInternational Inc. |
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Rating: 9.4
Too Many Days Without Thinking, their fourth full-length release, is their absolute best so far. From the thumping bass drum power of "Throw The Wine," through the rock 'n' rolling fields of "Fuck Even Flow" and the sweet ballad "Bridgette, You Love Me," Too Many Days Without Thinking is a breakthrough on speaking terms with the Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream and Nirvana's Nevermind. Am I serious? Goddamn right. -Ryan Schreiber |
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| Swell went through a great deal to make this, its fourth album after three critically acclaimed discs as indies and for (Def) American Recordings. And they learned some valuable home improvement skills along the way. The band left its San Francisco base in the fall of '94 for a massive warehouse in downtown L.A., and built an isolation room for the drums out of moldy carpet and duct tape. While in the area, they appeared in a Showtime movie by Griffin Dunne, "Duke of Groove." After occupying a real studio in Hollywood, they regrouped in San Francisco a year after leaving, finished up most of the mixes and welcomed Kurt Ralske (Ultra Vivid Scene) to produce what is now a B-side ("20,000 Years"). The band decamped with Ralske back to his Zabriskie Point Studio and the coldest New York February on record, living in the studio and building a shower while Ralske helped them re-record everything and piece it all together the old-fashioned way, on 2-inch tape, one part at a time. By April 1996 it was completed and the final master was sent on May 1 to American, where Rick Rubin took two months to listen to it - and passed. Then Beggars Banquet, their European distributor, stepped in and here you have it, 10 songs and 42 minutes of indie cool. Fortunately, suffering makes for great
art. Anomie and discomfort seethe throughout this album's anthems and The band addresses its recent and past history in "What Took So Long?" in its "Swollen" illustrated newsletter/presskit. It's packed with trivia, autobiography rendered in dry wit, a complete discography and fan mail. During their wilderness years they were also asked to submit a song for "Showgirls" - watch the first few minutes, until "Don't Give" comes over the truck radio, then return the tape (without rewinding) immediately and rent something better, like "Kingpin." For my money, the trails for this album
were worth it - the smelly carpet, the hard floors, the maddening behavior
of the bearded label honcho. Too Many Days Without Thinking
succeeds despite these adversities. And this release made an instant
Swell fan out of me. - Daniel Aloi
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I
don't know what you know about Swell, so let me inform you. David Freel
and Sean Kirkpatrick formed the group way back in 1989 and have been
making great records ever since.
love songs. The drumming is all muffled anger, bipolar guitars churn
in roiling distemper, fuzzy crescendos and acoustic jangle (all three
on "At Lennie's") and the overall production is thick with the cottonmouth
haze of sleeping on the floor. "What I Always Wanted" is simple lyrically
but deep emotionally, "Make Mine You" says "I'm happy most of the time"
and the hypnotic, driving "(I Know) The Trip" is the final pinnacle
of the mutation of two earlier songs of admiration. "Fuck Even Flow"
is unfortunately titled right out of a deserving run at the airwaves.
