Swan Lake – Enemy Mine (Jagjaguwar: March 2009)
For those not in the know, Swan Lake is a trio of Canadian indie musicians hailing from 3 (or 4 or 5) of the best rock groups currently populating the Great White North: Spencer Krug, of Wolf Parade and Sunset Rubdown; Dan Bejar of Destroyer and the New Pornographers; and Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes. The unlikely triumvirate emerged in 2008 with their debut album, Beast Moans, a Schumpeterian result of their distinctive and chaotic styles. The album is thrush with the kind of apocalyptic gothic imagery you would expect to encounter at the event horizon of hell. That being said, Enemy Mine offers the same type of style and imagery but it is infinitely more subtle, and one might say, more careful in its total outward perception.
1. Spanish Gold, 2044 (Mercer)
Spanish Gold begins the album with a drunken stagger: a man begins to sing but slowly descends into madness, microphone clenched in his hand. The track is drenched in dark, its stuttering guitar keeping the time for its beleaguered leader. Until, that is, the comrades chanting his doom in the background join into a cacophonous laughter, wailing prophesy fit for the end of the world. For me, the dominant imagery remains Mercer singing from the mountaintops as the world burns around him – a wizard in a world-eating storm caused by his own hand – his acolytes complementing and helping the destructive conjuration.
2. Paper Lace (Krug)
From the tornado of fire that is Spanish Gold, 2044 follows a relatively easy song, replete with un-shadowed vocals, and not a hint of madness to be found; even after being the “wild thing” the subject is sent back “to his good home.” I’m not sure it’s a song you should play for your best mate before he gets married but it is a nice song, and it has an interesting little guitar riff that follows it around until the end that reminds me of the Beach Boys.
3. Heartswarm (Bejar)
Dan Bejar is one of my favourite lyricists and singers, despite the many protestations of musical people everywhere. These criticisms tend to be of three distinct types: his voice is terrible – some people simply can’t handle his voice, and causes their spine to shiver as though afflicted with hypothermia. The la-de-da-de-dums – many criticize his (over)use of this accent in his music. This is a fair assessment as he does this a lot in many songs, but he is consistent about it and it sounds pretty good. The last and greatest criticism, his “poetic lyrics” – many think it is mad genius, many think it is college-level ramblings, with a hint of intelligence and a lot of nonsense. I am of the mind that most of it is genuine, and the rest is there for the critics and possibly without specific meaning. Those with the intent will give it the meaning they want. When you think about it, this is true for almost any art: paintings, poems, fiction, sculpture – people give meaning to it and often, when it doesn’t mesh nicely in the margins, a (often jealous) criticism ensues. I digress.
Heartswarm isn’t Bejar’s best work, but it is a beautiful little piano driven ditty. To me, this song is about Bejar indulging in companionship spawned by an artistic depression, or stagnation (his companion? Probably Swan Lake). The stagnation caused by Bejar believing that Destroyer’s Rubies was his most recent “best” work, and consequently believing that Trouble in Dreams was a disappointment: “...I was stuck inside of dreams, coming off something pretty strong.” In fact, the second verse, possibly the whole song, could be read as an arrow pointed at reviewers and the media people for lambasting his style and music. I read it that way though it is probably way off.
4. Settle on Your Skin (Krug)
This song is a frantic and dark-toned sprint right from the beginning, and could have been penned by Ed Gein himself. In contrast to most of the album, this is a really rocking tune.
5. Battle of a Swan Lake, or, Daniel’s Song (Bejar)
This is not a song per se, but more of a poem or a chant – which actually is the reason this is a worthwhile listen. It has some nice lyrics, “I sat down and took a number, at the table where death resides,” and the backing vocals at the end are beautifully terrifying. And another thing Swan Lake does so well is tricking you into thinking you’re listening to a sparse, bare song; out of nowhere comes crescendos and cacophonies of noise – and it sounds damn good.
6. Peace (Mercer)
Again, Mercer delivers a great song – definitely one of my favourites. It is, as is the trend on Enemy Mine, a dark song with equally dark lyrics sung by a possessed Mercer; it reads like a cryptic account of events that would occur around a suicide: “...no savage detectives to evade”; “No crystal cathedrals to lease. No, dancing in the basement must immediately cease – by order of the Grand Diocese.” Yet, those are only the usual, direct results of a positive suicide; the line, “The important event to behold, is when we purge the terror from your bones,” is full of meaning and importance: it transforms this from a song about suicide to a song about hurt, anguish, depression, and the idea that the person wanting “peace” is under the pressure fist of something they cannot exorcise themselves. The repeated lines at the end, “No suicide” is at once a description and a statement of triumph.
7. Spider (Bejar)
I won’t lie: Spider is a bit of a letdown in my opinion. It doesn’t really mesh with the rest of the album thematically speaking, and represents somewhat of a degression in terms of scope compared to the other songs. It would seem to belong on a Destroyer album rather than a Swan Lake album.
8. A Hand at Dusk (Krug)
There is something deeply beautiful and wistful about this song. A beautiful and poignant piano begins and follows this song throughout: the proverbial ghost in the machine, it really sets the tone. The wispy and forlorn lyrics are etched with a masterful grace by Krug, and contribute just as equally to the mood as does the music: “There’s a hand at dusk, in the wake in the water it’s mine,” and “You are the flash of skin seen through the leaves of anxious trees/The summer’s touch just above the knee, just above the knee.” The more I listen to it the more it lends itself to a picturesque vision of nature, where nature is first grandiose, mysterious and wonderful (“there’s architecture here/and there are mountain peaks/and places dwelled upon by those/who have climbed much higher than me”), only to be finally being tamed and “compiled into books and maps by men with pens.” Two-thirds through the song, it really opens up, with louder piano and all three singers combining for a nice stanza before Krug does his creepy best, softly alluding to the Allegory of the Cave and Plato (perhaps).
9. Warlock Psychologist (Mercer)
Warlock Psychologist is a strange song by any criteria but for Swan Lake it’s pretty par for the course. Most notable are Mercer’s gunslinger poet lyrics, spewed chaotically across a canvas of halting drum beats. The last two minutes of the song are absolutely triumphant and awe-inspiring; something you would want playing at the end of an 8 day bender in the middle of Turkey.
Enemy Mine is a great album from 3 of the best musicians on the Canadian music scene today. It’s been said before and is worth mentioning again: a “super group” formation like this always causes murmurs of nervous anxiety and whispers of doubt. In many cases those doubts are warranted, but in this instance those doubts are somewhat unfounded. All three artists contribute good material on this album and it’s well worth the hard listen. In my opinion, Mercer and Krug really step it up here while Bejar seems to have fallen off the horse (or fallen into the lake, as the case may be) but the good thing about a group like this is that the weight isn’t totally on one artist. In any case, the instrumentation, mixing, and backing vocals more than make up for any particular shortcomings. Enemy Mine is still better than 70 percent of everything released so far in Canada, and maybe the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment