Artist: Swan Lake
Album: Enemy Mine
Year: 2009
Grade: 3.5 pretzels
Enemy Mine, for those of you who aren’t epic sci-fi fanatics, is an occasionally entertaining 1985 movie starring none other than Dennis Quaid, mugging as a futuristic space pilot. He crashes on a hostile planet, along with a Drac, a member of a reptilian race at war with humanity. Eventually, they become friends, leading Quaid to adopt the Drac’s child. Of course, when Quaid is inevitably rescued, everyone can’t understand why he’s attached to this alien-child. There’s lots of screaming, lots of fighting and eventually everything works out. How it didn’t sweep the Oscars is a mystery that will probably never be answered. But an even bigger mystery is why Swan Lake, a Canadian indie rock supergroup, chose to name their second album after this twenty-five-year-old movie. To my disappointment, this is not the album that finally marries indie rock to intergalactic space relations. I keep waiting.
Misleading title notwithstanding, Enemy Mine (the album) is certainly interesting and rewarding in its own right (arguably, more so than its namesake movie). Swan Lake is an artistic collaboration between three heavy hitters in Canadian music: Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade/Sunset Rubdown, Dan Bejar of Destroyer/the New Pornographers and finally Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes/various other bands forgotten by time. It’s an odd partnership to be sure. All three are idiosyncratic, slightly warped songwriters and putting them all together like this threatens the world with previously unheard of levels of inaccessibility. Mercer’s throttled baritone is a very acquired taste and Bejar’s elliptical lyrics and ability to out-nasal Bob Dylan haven’t exactly won him top 40 hits. Even Krug, by far the most “normal” of the three, has a distinct streak for oddball songwriting, while possessing a manic, strained voice. Swan Lake are a band that aren’t exactly for everybody.
However, Enemy Mine is certainly a step in the right direction. They debuted back in 2006 with Beast Moans, an album which lost itself in disjointed artistic indulgence. It sounded exactly like what it was: three out-there songwriters pooling their songs together and seeing what happened. By now, they seem to have settled down and are working together to bring out the best in each other’s work. They each bring three tunes to the table, each with its writer’s identity firmly stamped upon it. But instead of sounding mismatched and roughly shoved together, Swan Lake have found a way to weave those three voices around each other to create something a bit stronger than the sum of its parts.
There are still a few problems to be ironed out. Lyrically, the album is very strong (when you can understand the words for all the warbling), but the melodies are still a bit rambling and lost. Bejar’s “Ballad Of A Swan Lake” has some fairly hilarious lines (“I sat down and took a number at the table where Death resides”), but the music just drifts along, shambling drunkenly. Mercer especially offers up some very difficult material to swallow, with “Peace” being a particularly dense and strange piece, even by Mercer’s wacky standards. The one absolutely solid, out-of-the-park hit on the album is Krug’s “A Hand At Dusk”, which makes the most out of a dusty, dark piano motif over an exquisite six minutes. It is, by miles, the finest thing Swan Lake have ever recorded and is a highlight of Krug’s entire career. Using that song as a starting point, I have no doubt that Swan Lake could record a true knockout album soon enough.
Misleading title notwithstanding, Enemy Mine (the album) is certainly interesting and rewarding in its own right (arguably, more so than its namesake movie). Swan Lake is an artistic collaboration between three heavy hitters in Canadian music: Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade/Sunset Rubdown, Dan Bejar of Destroyer/the New Pornographers and finally Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes/various other bands forgotten by time. It’s an odd partnership to be sure. All three are idiosyncratic, slightly warped songwriters and putting them all together like this threatens the world with previously unheard of levels of inaccessibility. Mercer’s throttled baritone is a very acquired taste and Bejar’s elliptical lyrics and ability to out-nasal Bob Dylan haven’t exactly won him top 40 hits. Even Krug, by far the most “normal” of the three, has a distinct streak for oddball songwriting, while possessing a manic, strained voice. Swan Lake are a band that aren’t exactly for everybody.
However, Enemy Mine is certainly a step in the right direction. They debuted back in 2006 with Beast Moans, an album which lost itself in disjointed artistic indulgence. It sounded exactly like what it was: three out-there songwriters pooling their songs together and seeing what happened. By now, they seem to have settled down and are working together to bring out the best in each other’s work. They each bring three tunes to the table, each with its writer’s identity firmly stamped upon it. But instead of sounding mismatched and roughly shoved together, Swan Lake have found a way to weave those three voices around each other to create something a bit stronger than the sum of its parts.
There are still a few problems to be ironed out. Lyrically, the album is very strong (when you can understand the words for all the warbling), but the melodies are still a bit rambling and lost. Bejar’s “Ballad Of A Swan Lake” has some fairly hilarious lines (“I sat down and took a number at the table where Death resides”), but the music just drifts along, shambling drunkenly. Mercer especially offers up some very difficult material to swallow, with “Peace” being a particularly dense and strange piece, even by Mercer’s wacky standards. The one absolutely solid, out-of-the-park hit on the album is Krug’s “A Hand At Dusk”, which makes the most out of a dusty, dark piano motif over an exquisite six minutes. It is, by miles, the finest thing Swan Lake have ever recorded and is a highlight of Krug’s entire career. Using that song as a starting point, I have no doubt that Swan Lake could record a true knockout album soon enough.
not to be a pitchfork puppet, but...
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