Richard Swift - Other People's Songs 1 - VINYL LP

Joe Pernice (Pernice Brothers, Scud Mountain Boys) releases a quarantine solo album. InchI made this in my basement bicycle shop during lock down. It's a very special record for me. The songs all felt right as they were written and recorded. There's a vibe and a sound. If you've ever recorded songs you'll know achieving those two things is rarely easy or successful. Anyway, I loved making this record. InchStarry Crown Sullivan Street Lonely People If We Were Better Friends We Both Know Spend This MountainRichardMy Long Black ShadowEverybody's BabyYou Should Of Came

Vinyl LP pressing. This simple, rather bubbly lyric seems to be the antithesis of a record unequivocally steeped in a milieu of devastating loss, grief, crippling depression, anxiety and alcoholism. 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. The lyric comes tucked at the tail end of the ironically jaunty and buoyant InchDirty Jim,Inch a song about substance abuse; the lies you tell yourself in it's 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 it's 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 masterpiece swan song with which to remember him. And every color now is shining through.

Vinyl LP pressing. Richard Swift's duo debuts, The Novelist and Walking Without Effort, are fraternal twins wrestling with same Big Questions in opposite ways - one toiling in a cinderblock basement slugging typewriter coffee; one lost on the Pacific Coast Highway, looking again and again for something in a sunset that just ain't there. One's wheezing through a crusty gramophone in some Artie Shaw air-conditioned nightmare; one's gliding on the soft tape of an 8-Track, fat tears welling up behind those outlandish '70s sunglasses. Taken together, they speak to Swift's wild, preternatural shapeshifting ability, an auteur's understanding of mood and place. Yet, you always know you're seeing these new places through Swift's translucent, wolven eyes. These two recordings are his 8 1/2, both the portal and the Rosetta Stone to Swift's singular musical universe and language. The much sought after is repressed on double vinyl for first time in years!