Soundbites: Swan Lake, “Beast Moans”

Swan Lake

“Beast Moans”

JAGJAGUWAR RECORDS

“Supergroup” is a term to be approached with a
certain degree of skepticism. Sure, The Good, the Bad & the
Queen are shaping up to be interesting and “Songs for the
Deaf”-era Queens of the Stone Age were actually a force to be
reckoned with, but most high-profile collaborations go the way of
Velvet Revolver and The Raconteurs, crashing before they even get
their feet off the ground.

What’s unique about Swan Lake ““ the amalgam of indie
giants Dan Bejar (Destroyer), Spencer Krug (Wolf Parade, Sunset
Rubdown) and Carey Mercer (Frog Eyes) ““ is not that it defies
the norm and makes high-quality music (it doesn’t), but that
it does away with the qualities inherent to a group.

When guitar virtuosos Matt Sweeney and Dave Pajo joined the
Billy Corgan-fronted Zwan, they had the discretion to know that the
nature of the project required them to underplay; Swan Lake,
however, offers no such sense of self-sacrifice.

“Beast Moans” is, in essence, three artists painting
their own picture at the same time on the same canvas. And though
there are gaps and holes that betray both beauty and craftsmanship,
the majority is lost in a muck of brown and caked layers of
“vision.”

The members of Swan Lake have some of the most singular and
identifiable styles in indie rock and, as such, it makes sense that
their individual approaches don’t mesh.

Take tracks “City Calls,” “Nubile Days”
and “Pleasure Vessels,” for instance. When broken down,
their pieces are easily identifiable ““ Bejar’s
persistent strumming, Krug’s soporific keyboard arpeggios,
Mercer’s reverb-laden embellishments ““ but tracked atop
one another, their initial charm is lost to a suffocating
density.

The same goes for their vocals; both “A Venue Called
Rubella” and “The Partisan But He’s Got to
Know” witness Swan Lake’s attempts at three-part vocal
harmonies and, in turn, demonstrate the utter absurdity of trying
to condense Bejar’s croon, Krug’s howl and
Mercer’s caterwaul into a cohesive unit.

It should go without saying, then, that the album’s best
moments are those dominated by a single voice, though they are
infrequent. “Widow’s Walk” and “The
Freedom” are signature Bejar tracks that would fit seamlessly
onto one of his Destroyer albums.

Likewise, “All Fires” and “Are You Swimming In
Her Pools?” could easily be the product of Krug’s main
drag, Sunset Rubdown; the former even lifts a verse (“All
fires have to burn alive to live”) right off Sunset
Rubdown’s last album. Unfortunately, Mercer doesn’t get
as much time in the spotlight as his peers and comes away from Swan
Lake with empty hands.

At best, “Beast Moans” offers nine tracks that
collapse under the weight of their source material and four tracks
that belong elsewhere. Look beyond that and all you’ll find
is a swamp of bloated, egocentric song writing just begging to be
tossed aside.

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