Richard Swift
Richard Swift is a multi instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, performer, producer and short film maker. Talented bastard.
Born in Minnesota and growing up on a remote farm, he explored music methodically from an early age, experimenting with recording techniques on four track recorders and delving inquisitively into the works of My Bloody Valentine, Nick Drake, The Beatles et al.
For a short period in the early nineties Swift could be found lending keyboard skills to the band Starflyer 59, before going on to do session work and putting together what became his first record, ‘Walking Without Effort’. However, it wasn’t until putting together songs for its follow up (‘The Novelist’), in between work on an electro project called Instruments of Science and Technology, that people worldwide would really start to take notice.
Befriending the likes of My Morning Jacket, Two Gallants and the Cold War Kids must have helped. Touring with these bands and others around the UK and the States over the past couple of years, Richard has also re-released the aforementioned duo of albums in a double CD set entitled ‘The Collected Works of Richard Swift Vol. 1’, to whet the appetite for his forthcoming LP ‘Dressed Up For The Letdown’.
That LP, which Richard plays nigh on all of himself, hits the shelves this week. It’s another triumph for a man who aims never to make the same record twice. And how many people can we actually say that about in this day and age?
**COMING SOON**: Chris Pratt, the first among us to pick up the Swifty’s talent, sat down for an entertaining chat (Richard could ‘talk for England’, apparently – if he were English, that is…), the results of which will be with us tantalisingly soon….
RICHARD SWIFT ON MYSPACE: One thing sets this apart from your standard MySpace profile fare – the fact that you can stream ‘Dressed Up For The Letdown’ from the forthcoming LP of the same name.
RICHARD SWIFT OFFICIAL: Press play on the curtain pull. Pick up the ring, drag it around, place it wherever you will. Spins its top so as to reveal secrets. If these words baffle you, you haven’t been here.
SECRETLY CANADIAN: A more coherent but decidedly less delightful official site from Richard Swift’s label, yet it does have two free MP3s to download (one from the new record, one from the old), and this makes it an essential visit.
THE NOVELIST LISTENING PARTY: Four tracks to stream and one to download and keep and love as your very own from this remarkable record. Well, pair of records – ‘Walking Without Effort’ is a disc just as important.
THE NOVELIST and WALKING WITHOUT EFFORT: The Rockfeedback Review. A fantastic, catch up double album (in a ‘Lyre of Orpheus’ / ‘Abbatoir Blues’ style) from – gasp – a singer songwriter clever enough to have learnt that sounding like everybody else is an awful thing to do
BEAUTIFULHEART : The Rockfeedback Review. One of our discoveries of the year further cements a place in our heart by covering Prince’s ‘Paisley Park’ on the b-side of this fine single. Note – this is always a good tactic when trying to impress rockfeedback
WATER RATS THEATRE, LONDON – NOVEMBER ‘06: The Rockfeedback Review. A stunning low key set to the ‘in the know’ crowd of the Water Rats.