Richard Swift - London Water Rats Theatre - 7/11/06
4/5
By: Chris Pratt
Although it's likely that you've never heard of him, the man strolling across the cramped Water Rats stage is responsible for one of 2006's most consistently great listens in the double-disc reissue of his first two albums, 'The Novelist/Walking Without Effort.' Plonking himself behind the keys of the electric piano which will serve as his perch for much of the next hour, he wastes no time in opening proceedings with an immaculate solo rendition of 'The Novelist,' his tale of a tortured Manhattan author's writer's block. Judging by the consistency and prolificacy of Swift's own releases to date, the song probably isn't written from personal experience but its lead character is nonetheless imbued with a sepia-tinted, prohibition-era authenticity. Swift's music often harks back to the good ol' days of the '30s and '40s, which makes it even more thrilling when he regularly drops whopping great vocoder solos and spluttering 808 beats into the middle of songs you'd normally expect to find in the worn-out grooves of a junk-shop 78.
Whilst the instrumentation (courtesy of Swift and his excellently named backing band, The Sons Of National Freedom) is packed with slack charm, the focus - somewhat inevitably for a singer-songwriter - is on Swift's voice. Cleansed of the album's crackling, lo-fi effects, it still retains the sense of dusty glamour as it swoops, sighs and cracks its way through the quieter passages, with strength in reserve for the leaps to loud, harmonically rich but teasingly brief choruses. Lyrically he's also impressive - the words appear so clean and stark, but something in Swift's world-weary delivery gives them the dramatic weight of endless unspoken memories and suggestions. It's been far too long since someone was brave enough to pen lines of such depth and simplicity.
He's got an album (or two) to promote, but Swift still takes plenty of opportunities to challenge his audience (who, three songs in, are utterly transfixed) with unfamiliar material - the four or five new songs he plays hint toward a muscularly harmonic power-pop direction for his next album, so that's yet another pop sub-genre perfected. His closing rendition of recent single 'Beautiful Heart,' with its stirringly simply refrain 'You with your beautiful heart,' shows further defiance of those who might like to pigeon-hole Swift in with Mojo magazine faves such as Rufus Wainwright. An already amped-up reading of the 'Walking Without Effort' closer is cranked even higher as Swift and The Sons bring the song to a thrillingly noisy, extended climax worthy of the best post-rock outfit. Next on Swift's busy release schedule is an instrumental EP, then he has one album totally finished and another written - it seems inescapable that Swift is going to be one of those musicians who will be thrillingly messing with his listeners' expectations for years to come, and I for one can't wait.
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