Richard Swift’s new album ‘The Hex’ to be released tomorrow

RICHARD SWIFT’S NEW ALBUM, THE HEX, TO BE RELEASED TOMORROW VIA SECRETLY CANADIAN

PHYSICAL ALBUM OUT DECEMBER 7TH

Listen to ‘Sept20’ here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFZsm-Luh1s

The track went out via a personal note on his Facebook earlier today

Every colour now is shining through…

This simple, rather bubbly lyric should be the antithesis of a record unequivocally steeped in a milieu of devastating loss, grief, depression and anxiety. But after probably-too-many late night deep dives into Richard Swift’s posthumous masterpiece, The Hex, these are the very words that carousel round and round your skull. It comes tucked at the tail end of the ironically jaunty and buoyant ‘Dirty Jim,’ a song about substance abuse; the lies you tell yourself in its grip; and the loved ones you hurt along the way. The line is a flash of hope and beauty and levity. Swift believed in and sought real beauty. And so, even at its most caustic and sardonic, The Hex is beautiful. Swift’s palette in life and art was almost always greyscale. But here we are, with this swan song with which to remember him. And every colour now is shining through.

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Richard Swift was always about exploration. He mined bygone genres, pushed boundaries behind the board, surveyed the totality of human experience, and blew minds all along the way. He was a studio sherpa and musical traveller, with dalliances in sepia-toned AM gold, krautrock, fuzzed-out garage, blue-eyed soul, and baroque pop. Whether as a producer, sideman, or on his own, you could guarantee he was digging for something. Just ask Damien Jurado, Chrissie Hynde, Dan Auerbach, James Mercer, Laetitia Sadier, David Bazan, Nathaniel Rateliff, Sharon Van Etten, and so many others who counted Richard as a co-conspirator, collaborator, mentor, or friend. The scope of his abilities can’t be overlooked, either. In addition to producing, composing, engineering, and mixing, Richard was a gifted pickup musician. His credits include piano, vocals, drums, xylophone, bass, organ, guitar, banjo —photography and sleeve design. To say he was a musician’s musician is a vast understatement.

Though known to many for his contributions to bands like The Shins, The Black Keys, Damien Jurado and most recently Kevin Morby and Lonnie Holley – contributions which are so distinct under closer inspection it seems almost impossible to imagine some of that music without him – Swift’s utterly unique character and idiosyncratic talent shines brightest on his solo material. 2007’s critically lauded Dressed Up For The Let Down remains an underground classic – an expansive album that somehow makes one stunning whole from Swifts wild, eccentric production style and varied song-writing ability. Across his back-catalogue tracks like ‘The Songs Of National Freedom’ and Atlantic Ocean’s infinitely catchy ‘Lady Luck’ shine bright as accessible, undeniable focal points where bubbling under the surface the likes of the bizarre, brilliantly funny ‘The Bully’ from the Ground Trouble Jaw EP act as wry-smiled treats for those who knew and understood his personality. His solo work rewards more the further you delve into its heart and for those who did The Hex has been a long time coming.

His first proper full length release since 2009, The Hex was conceived sometime in 2012; really finding its conceptual footing in 2016; and finalised in the month before his death with plans for its release already in place, The Hexis the grand statement that Swift acolytes have been patiently wishing and hoping for all these years; all his powers coalescing into a single, long-player statement after a career of sticking some of his finest songs on EPs and 45s. At its core, The Hex is an aching call out into the void for Swift’s mother (‘Wendy’) and his sister (‘Sister Song’) whom he lost in back-to-back years. You hear a man at his lowest and spiritually on his heels. The pain that fuels Swift’s cries of “She’s never comin’ back” on ‘Nancy’ is hard to hear. There are moments on this record where it’s difficult to go on listening but there’s some sort of dark catharsis for anyone who’s ever lost a loved one to the cold abstraction of death. Over a slow, Wall of Sound kick and a warbling synth, Swift’s cries climb higher and higher into what may be his most devastating vocal performance on record. It’s so real and so raw that Swift had to treat the performance with just a little studio effect, without which the recorded grieving might be too much to bear.

The Hex is presented here as The Hex For Family and Friends. His songs are full of nods and references that mean more to those who knew him best, who paid close attention to his art, to the phrases on which he fixated. Like his visual art hero Ray Johnson, Swift had a gift for creating a personal myth, an elusive and captivating inside joke. He turned his anxieties into cartoon characters and cryptic phrases. An obsessive fan of doo-wop, early Funkadelic, Bo Diddley, Beefheart and Link Wray, Swift gives them all a moment with the flashlight around The Hex campfire, one moment to make a strange shadow-cast face for us, his family and friends. At the end of the day, Swift would rather you soil your pants laughing, than sob through this record. To this end, he gives us the bombastic, maggot-brained ‘KENSINGTON!’, a narrative song about a doomed expedition — which might be the skeleton key to this whole goddamned affair. There are rats and hornets and some unknown enemy out there in the darkness. And you just know there’s no way Kensington and his team are getting out of this thing alive. In the chaos, these ill-fated explorers just start firing. Swift is belly laughing about the absurdity of making sounds for a living as a way to battle your demons, getting all meta about life, death and music – and where they all just sail off the proverbial cliff together:

A SEQUENCE OF ECHOES, BANG! A SEQUENCES OF ECHOES, BANG!…AND THEN A LONG SILENCE….IT’S GENIUS.

Purchase The Hex, including limited edition bundle, here: https://www.musicglue.com/richard-swift/

Download album art & hi-res images of Richard Swift here.