Richard Swift
4/24/7 at Schubas in Chicago
Richard Swift is lovely. He’s a man that is more interested in the poetic and the nature of feeling than in the catchy. He’s keen on the expression and insight into emotions more than the construction of a pop song. And yet, the songs are definitely not devoid of melody. He captures in some of them an almost childlike music box sort of dreamy innocence. Touring to support his newest release, Dressed up for the Letdown, with his bandmates The Sons of National Freedom, he brought new songs to the stage than when he had played Schubas previously, though he still made a place for a few older favorites.
It should be no surprise that Swift is keen on melody given that he used to play keyboards in the lush Starflyer 59. Though I may have actually at one time seen him play with this band and have a few of their releases, I’m happy to see Swift has moved on to express more of himself, which he definitely has in his three full length releases. The accompanying band, or sons as they call themselves, also kept up with him and didn’t ruin the delicacy of many of the songs. It’s fully apparent that the set would have been just as enjoyable without them present, just in a different and more intimate way. Though I think his newest release is solid, the songs of the set that were most magical to me were the ones off of the first two albums The Novelist and Walking Without Effort, such as “Lady Day” and “Sadsong St.” The one criticism I have for his set was that I felt the use of the vocorder really didn’t fit with the more organic and literary feel to his songs and, though he only used it in a couple of them, it was more distracting and synthetic sounding to me than anything else. I hadn’t remembered him using that before when he had come to Schubas last and I felt it prevented me from connecting to the music I was hearing. Then again, I’m really not a fan of this device, either.
Listen to Richard Swift on myspace
Setlist:
Opening band six piece White Rabbits were covered in an earlier RFC writeup, though I had not heard their songs until I arrived at Schubas. I found them to be very energetic and, as suggested by the preview, reminiscent of Man Man. I really enjoyed the way they interacted with eachother and enjoyed themselves on stage while playing incredibly catchy rifts. One thing you can also say-the band clearly has enough drums. For much of the set, two drummers to the back of the stage kept the beat going but there were also times when the keyboardist joined the drumming on his own set amidst the crowded stage. This band definitely has potential.