SWANN’S SONGS REFLECTION OF A COMPLEX MIND
Artist gets personal on new album, says Eric Volmers.
Matthew Swann wastes no time setting a mood on Strange Prison, the sophomore record released under his Astral Swans moniker.
A troubled mindset is succinctly established in the opening line on the album’s opening track, Blow Up. Against glacier-paced organ and acoustic guitar, Swann softly and slowly sings: “I had a dream in which I killed all of my friends.”
“It definitely hits you from the start,” says the Calgary singer-songwriter with a laugh.
A full band eventually kicks in and the song seems to become more inwardly hostile than outwardly threatening.
“And you can read my thoughts. Every terrible thing I’m capable of. Now you’re going to go away, with only myself to blame,” he sings.
There are a number of themes running through Strange Prison, Swann says. But in a clarifying e-mail sent after his interview with Postmedia, he said the album reflects his attempts to “honestly and humbly express complex inner feelings” and an “attempt at self inventory.”
“A lot of it comes from reflections of my own mental states,” says Swann, who will be holding a CD release party on May 17 at Broken City before embarking on a mini-tour of Japan.
It’s an idea that has apparently fascinated Swann for quite some time. As influences, his press material name-checks Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd’s acid casualty who may or may not have suffered from schizophrenia; and lo-fi cult singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston, who certainly does suffer from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Swann says he has always been intrigued by the notion of outsider art, or art brut, and how mental issues can impact an artist’s practise or world view.
Diagnosed with obsessivecompulsive disorder and depression, he says it’s an idea that has come into play in his music.
“It’s always been there and that’s always been something I’ve been fascinated by,” he says. “My own mind space has always informed my work, obviously. I think this time, it’s just being a little more open about that. The song Strange Prison would be a perfect example of that. It’s a pretty dark song that uses a lot of imagery about my own issues with depression and anxiety.”
That’s not to say Swann’s often funny and occasionally unsettling lyrics on the album are pure navel-gazing. He is also a storyteller, reflecting on the human condition and even offering some vague political commentary on tunes such as Prison Builder and the lilting and melodic The Kids Came By and Burned Down the Scene. The former is a potent vignette about a labourer working on a private prison in the U.S. who develops empathy for the prisoners that will eventually be housed there. The latter is about “being fed up with the state of the world.”
“That was right around the time of the Trump campaign,” Swann says. “It’s about just the state of the world on a largescale, politically, and the smallscale level in the individual communities that we live in within our cities and our own scenes. It’s the idea that maybe the next generation will come around and destroy us and build something better out of it, I guess.”
Strange Prison is a followup to 2015’s stripped-down All My Favorite Singers are Willie Nelson, which came after Swann’s stints in Calgary projects such as Hot Little Rocket and Extra Happy Ghost!!! Astral Swans’ debut came out on Vancouver singersongwriter Dan Mangan’s Madic Records. Mangan produced two of the songs on Strange Prison, including the slinky Control and the short-and-sweet noise-pop snapshot Excess.
Scott Munro of Calgary’s Preoccupations was brought in to co-produce the rest of the record at the Department of Creativity and Mischief, a studio owned by Swann’s friend, Paul Chirka, who is also the recording engineer of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra.
Sonically, the album builds on Astral Swans’ stark, apartment recorded debut without losing any of its raw intimacy. Even relatively poppy tunes such as General Rule and I Belong feel like eavesdropping on the fuzzy musical thoughts floating through Swann’s consciousness.
“I wanted to do a full-on studio record and really explore the possibilities of working in the studio,” he says.
“It was just a very different approach from the previous one. That was the strategy.”
Interestingly, Swann said he took sonic cues from the drugfuelled funk of Sly and the Family Stone’s early 1970s albums, specifically the 1971 classic There’s A Riot Goin’ On and its groundbreaking 1973 followup, Fresh. Like Johnston and Barrett, Sly Stone has a troubled history with addiction and erratic behaviour. But Swann says it was Stone’s madcap production techniques on those albums that proved most inspirational for him.
“He’s falling apart, he’s a drug addict, he’s locked himself in the studio all by himself and he’s totally f--king insane,” he says. “And yet there’s this beautiful transcendent masterpiece that came out of it. There’s a lot of bizarre studio techniques and methods occurring. It was this incredibly talented musical man having this massive breakdown and he has locked himself in the studio and is totally making this masterpiece on his own without really knowing how to properly engineer it. I’m just fascinated by the desperation of that experience. I think it’s a testament to the power of music and transcendent beauty of art.”
Astral Swans play Broken City on May 17. Strange Prison will be released May 18.