Richard Swift - Richard Swift As Onasis - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Celebrated for his lo-fi, experimental milanges saluting genres from doo-wop to rich American pop, Swift adds jaunty synthesizers and Motown soul to make this, his fourth , his most danceable record to date. RIYL Wilco, M. Ward, My Morning Jacket, Ryan Adams.

Employing an archaic attitude of tempered restraint on a fresh collection of ten songs, without appearing shamelessly retro or kitschy. Swift leads the faithful further into a melancholic world draped with colorful sonic landscapes. This is his first new material recorded since 2001 and is the follow-up to the re- of his double CD InchThe Novelist / Walking Without EffortInch in 2005. He's toured with My Morning Jacket, the Walkmen, Elbow, Josh Ritter, Jens Lekman, and Earlimart, earning a reputation for a live rock revivalist, conjuring up images of classic period Dylan and the Band from the late '60s and early '70s.

Over the weekend of August 21-22, 2010, not long after Damien Jurado and Richard Swift first collaborated to produce Damien's 2010 record, Saint Bartlett, the pair hunkered down with a 4-track recorder and one Coles 4038 ribbon microphone to record a collection of cover songs that run the gamut from John Denver to Chubby Checker to Kraftwerk. The timing was perfect. On Other People's Songs Vol 1, we can see the scaffolding of what would become a creative turning point for the pair - later seen with the of Damien Jurado's Maraqopa, the first record in his Maraqopa trilogy - less than 2 years later. The opening drum hits of InchBe Not So FearfulInch, the falsetto vocals of InchSweetnessInch, and the Spaghetti-Western swing of InchRadioactivityInch are, by now, hallmarks of the Jurado/Swift sound, but Other People's Songs Vol 1 is a transitional fossil, a marking of the pair's collaborative evolution.