Despite the name, there's nothing remotely Tom Waits-like about this band. What you get instead is a much more familiar indie-rock orientated sound pitched somewhere between The Mission and Joy Division. They have classic guitar-bass-drum-vox line-up is augmented by occasional trumpet, trombone & keyboards. They sound like the sort of group you expect to see in videos with lots of atmospheric shadows and perhaps the occasional wind machine.
Swordfishtrombones (SFT) are from Brno which , after Prague, is second largest city in the Czech Republic. The band have been together for nine years and this, their third album,comes a full five years after their last, Hunting Season. All the songs are entirely in English, with singer Milos Rejsek's baritone voice only giving away their origins on the slower tracks.
The opening three tracks encapsulate the range of their sound with alternating dynamics of strident rock; moody ballad & art-pop.. The opening track - My Last Milk - sets off a brisk pace, vaguely reminiscent of Patti Smith's 'Dancing Barefoot' . For 'Sleepy Voices' they slow down the pace with half spoken vocals and trumpet solo to create the more reflective mood. Track three is catchy pop although with a chorus line of "It's just the Hitler in me" I, for one, won't be singing along. These three tracks set the tone for the rest of the album with only a glitchy number called 'Exile' with a 'Walk on the Wild Side' groove straying from this pattern.
|
The SFT sound is very tight and on a purely technical level it is hard to fault - they probably sound great live. Unfortunately, there's nothing which is original enough to set it apart from the pack on any other level. They can be added to the list of bands who share what Julie Burchill, when writing about U2 , memorably called a "non specific epicness".
Rejsek is a serious minded songwriter who is promoted in terms of the "peculiar poetics of a young soul lost in an urban landscape". One of the problems is that the questing lyrics strive a little too hard to be deep and meaningful and end being too obtuse and aloof to really engage this listener.
|
