About This Item
Recorded in 2011 in a dusty, beloved barn, Even Your Drums Will Die is a time machine, a real one, to a moment packed thick with Richard Swift's singular, crackling liveliness. Swift is known to many as a producer moreso than a songwriter, but these songs! This voice! They are machete-sharp here, his voice clear as a bell and slicing wry, expert wordplay on it's blade. Where Swift's studio recordings are marked by texture, tone and mood, Even Your Drums Will Die puts an indelible spotlight on Swift's voice, his lyrics and his songwriting. Live recordings are often marked by imperfection, but if you've ever been to Pickathon, you know that the Galaxy Barn possesses an incomparable magic. It is, somehow, everyone's beloved local club, that one grimy place where bands become favorite bands, and favorite bands deliver all-time sets. If the sound is imperfect it's because you are so close you are somehow inside it, small and sweaty, Alice in Wonderlanding through this speaker wire or that drum head. It shouldn't translate to tape, but here we are. Running through all of Swift's tunes is a certain agitation - a fidgetiness, a restlessness. It's clearer than ever now, over two years after Swift's passing, that he used his music to let a little pressure out of his tire, and nowhere is that truer than when it is about being alive and about being dead. In fact, Even Your Drums Will Die opens, unbelievably, with a harmonica - with the sound of Swift's breath making music. He sings InchI wish I was dead / most of the time / but I don't really mean itInch and your breath catches. He sings InchI'm alive / I'm alive / I'm alive / so tell my daughters not to cryInch and you want to grab the song or the air in your fists and shake it. It should be noted that the InchBallad of Milton FeherInch nods to all this, it's namesake coming from the professional dancer and director of the Milto
