Richard Swift - Beautiful Heart (Secretly Canadian)
4/5
By: Charlie Potter
Mmm... that's nice.
The simplicity of this song is fantastic. Yeah, so I'm not overly keen on the verse, chorus, solo, verse, extended chorus nature of it - I'd rather there was a little more to sink my yellowy teeth into - but the lovely, straightforward guitar chords that are strummed out go really well with Swift's old man who's been to the edge telling a war story kind of voice, spreading out another simple melody like a warm glow. A lot of people have managed this much but the vast majority of those people do not have an equally simple melody played on church bells. Richard Swift is those people with bells on.
There is nothing to 'Beautiful Heart' that is over laboured, and why should there be when you have three simple melodies that are far better than the sum of their parts, pushed along by a simple egoless drum part, topped with a chorus lifted by a sample of a choir filling out the guitar chords? Oh yeah, and the lyrics are fantastic - 'you with your beautiful heart', it sings - making you think why on earth there are all those idiots out there overcomplicating their words when they could just say things like this. As he develops the theme, he provides a fantastic thought to muse over as the chorus extends out into an instrumental of the aforementioned melodies. This is where the church bells really hammer it home that Richard Swift knows how to write good, honest, no-nonsense songs.
I guess I could understand if you thought it was a little boring. But listen to the way he sings 'you with your beautiful heart'. And the bells. Please. One thing I will say though Richard Swift is sort your bloody website out! All that Flash nonsense doesn't impress me, how am I supposed to lead people to believe I know everything about music if your bloody discography thingy goes whizzing past when I'm trying to click it? Sort it out, mate.
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