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Swan*Seas Release Impressive Debut Album
Swan*Seas Release Impressive Debut Album
Songs in the Key of Blue, a nine-track project sung entirely in English, whose roots are deeply planted in the soil of 80s & early 90s British goth rock, is the debut album from Milanese rock band Swan*Seas, and it’s designed to be a portrait of the band’s conception during the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown. Swan*Sees hit their stride early on with minimalistic, purely functional drum patterns that keep tempo while guitars trade-off between swirling and striking, and, for the most part, they keep it in that same pocket.
These Italian shoegazers display their somber and screeching guitar riffs and their drony vocalist meandering over the strummy arrangement, mixed to sound like a washed-out Robert Smith.
From the opening track “Frosted Glass,” these Italian shoegazers display their somber and screeching guitar riffs, a throughline on the album, their drony vocalist meandering over the strummy arrangement, mixed to sound like a washed-out Robert Smith. The production on every track sounds purposefully distant and obscure in a similar dream-pop fashion. “Fuzzy Feeling” establishes itself, in much the same way as the former, a lavish and crunchy hook that saunters into garish, surfish verses.
“A Line Slowly Tracing” prominently utilizes electronic noise from a drum machine and synthesizer while slowing the tempo into a more sentimental and reflective sound than previous tracks. The rhythm guitar on this track strums intermittently behind the vocalist’s echoey ballad and is abbreviated by the lead guitar plucking a few notes. “2002”, another in a lineup of drifting ballads that drone and echo in hues of blues, carries this tone forward– this time front-loaded with a lengthy instrumental that sets up a righteous crescendo, brought on by the only appearance of a horn section on the project, and picks the pace back up for the subsequent tracks to wrap the album.
“Drop to the Floor” sets itself apart with a marching drum beat, serving as a prominent backdrop for one of the more sonically uplifting cuts on the LP, driving the ascent in mood from both rhythm and lead guitar. “Such a Drag” puts a bow on the album with a yearning return to thematic form without being quite as melancholic via shinier guitar licks and synth backing.
Eleonora Falso.
For an album intended to pack a sad punch, Songs in the Key of Blue finds a remarkable amount of room to rock out in between bumming out. Swan*Sees also bring enough contemporary technique to the old-fashioned melodramatic sound they’re selling to make the project feel fresh and inspired, even if more than a couple of these tracks can be difficult to distinguish from one another and especially for a stomping ground as trodden on as shoegaze. One key drawback present across all of the songs on the album is that the washed-out production, plus the whole second language thing, can make lyricism hard to discern; however, on an album like this, it becomes an afterthought seeing how the genre is historically motivated more by crafting a vibe than anything else, and in that, Songs in the Key of Blue is successful.
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