Swank, The Survival Issue (Killbeat)
Whiskey-drenched, cotton-pickin', often dark and old-timey but full of spirit and humour, this wonderful little album comes complete with a cover that is a real work of art. Produced by Howard Redekopp of New Pornographers fame, you can't help but smile as each track is revealed in all its animated glory. Rockabilly, Elvis Presley, the great god Nick Cave, Tom Petty, blues, soul, roots, pop, country...everything is squeezed in and performed with abandon. It's obvious that the five members of Swank have moved on from their rockabilly roots and have decided to throw everything into their swampy melting pot. Check out the groovy "Reverend Pleasant," with its chunky, soulful beat, the sinister, bluesy, slide-guitar drenched "Neighbours" or the uplifting "Harvest Time," complete with gum-suckin' harmonica, for a good time. With The Survival Issue, Vancouver's finest really have something to swank about. - john stacey
Fresh Discs For Your Hungry Player:
Swank
The Survival Issue
Country-Rock
Their second disc is an impressive and pretty varied mix of country,
surf and rock and roll. It starts off with a rare instrumental ("The
Incident At Rock Creek") then drifts into an all out Gospel-call and
response rocker "How Do We Do." There's a video for this one. You may
want to request it with the folks at Muchmusic. When Swank played the
Railway they did an acoustic set and a later electric set. This disc
concentrates on more their electric side, but there is the odd light
shed on their acoustic side with songs like "How F**ked Is That?" a
lovely, outside-porch ballad with a wonderfully low-key vocals by lead
singer Spenser McKinnon, despite the rather terse title, as well as
their usual barn-burners like "1963 Galaxie" and "Wanted In Ten States."
There's even an off-kilter tale of some creepy "Neighbours." Along with McKinnon, Phil Addington (bass guitar), Paul Addington (rhythm guitar) Doug Little (lead guitar, slide, steel and banjo) and drummer Kirk Douglas (Yep. that's his real name) provide solid backing on a most enjoyable, no-nonsense album best heard at top volume. The artwork (a mock survival magazine) is as much fun as the music. It's like a miniaturized LP package--a welcome relief from the usual jewel box. For more musings on Swank visit: www.iwantswank.com
Artist-Recording-Song
Q and Not U - Power - Wonderful People
Femme Generation - Circle Gets the Square - Emergency
The Rogers Sisters - Three Fingers - Freight Elevator
The Blood Brothers - Crimes - Peacock Skelton with Crooked Fingers
Les Georges Leningrad - Sur Les Traces De Black Eskimo - Sponsorships
Gary Wilson - Mary Had Brown Hair - Linda Wants to be Alone
Elizabeth - Blick A - War is Beautiful
The Ex - Turn - Listen to the Painters
The Gossip - Movement - Confess
Sleater-Kinney - Rock Against Bush Vol. 2 - Off With Your Head
Blues Explosion - Damage - Fed Up and Low Down
Soledad Brothers - Voice of Treason - The Elucidation
Swank - The Survival Guide - How Do We Do
The Legendary Shack Shakers - Believe - Cussin in Tongues
Neko Case - The Tigers Have Spoken - Wayfairing Stranger
Gentleman Reg - Darby and Joan - Get it Together
Nathan Coles - Bird - As I Walk
Beck - The Late Great Daniel Johnston - True Love Will Find You in the End
Daniel Johnston - The Late Great Daniel Johnston - True Love Will Find You in the End
The Barmitzvah Brothers - Night of the Party - Tale of Three Bars
Matias Rozenburg - Toronto is the Best - Small Fires Burn Bright
The Chestnuts and the Trees - McPherson - Holy Smokes
The Arcade Fire - Funeral - In the Back Seat
Grand Mouse House - Social Hearts - Tell Me Again
Alight - Story of Glass Part 1 : Erosion - Dead and the Waiting
Blueprint - Chamber Music - Mr. Hyde
Swank 'THE SURVIVAL ISSUE'
Swank is a neo-rural outfit, so if you're not into that, you won't like 'em. But otherwise, this is one rocking disc. It has uproarious lyrics and great music, as well as entertaining packaging and excellent production features.
The disc has 15 tracks and they're all worth listening to. In addition to the music, the CD folder is filled with stunning images and complete song lyrics (these guys get three stars for packaging alone), and the disc itself contains the video for "How Do We Do?" (and does not attempt to install wads of copy protection on your computer).
Swank has put together a killer disc with The Survival Issue and there is absolutely nothing else to say. Pick it up even if you‚re not altogether fond of the new alt-country kitsch trend. This is an awesome album that is hard to forget and they're Canadian.
Alex Leitch
Barenaked Ladies meet the Cramps in rockabilly roots riot. Authentic rockabilly roots from Vancouver? From the opening twang of Spaghetti Western-inspired "The Incident at Rock Creek", you're gonna howl 'Yeah, baby'! Braying harmonica, raunchy gospel singalongs, banjo, yodeling and the double punch of rumbling guitars conspire to make 'The Survival Issue' one wild ride through Hank Williams country all the way to Rocket From the Crypt with a detour through Jon Spencer's Blues Explosion. Produced by Howard Redekopp (New Pornographers) 'The Survival Issue' is Swank's second release, a follow-up to 'Pappy's Corn Squeezin's'.
The cd comes in a retro-styled booklet of creepy illustrations, oblique cartoons and 50's ads for bullets, stilettos and hypnosis lessons. The lyrics appear as short stories illustrated with skeletons, ventriloquists dummies and murky figures in various states of lust and peril which capture perfectly the dark, perverse mood of the songs. The music is what matters but the artwork and packaging here is in a class of its own.
Although marketed as a jokey, retro pastiche, the musicianship and production confirm this five piece as serious players who know their chops. Duelling guitars thunder and blaze with George Thorogood-style muscle but are just as comfortable oozing a delicate Calexico twang. The single, 'How Do We Do?'‚ (video included on enhanced cd) is a catchy gospel hoe-down sounding like a drunken congregation kicking over the pews and storming the altar but there are plenty of other highlights. The most radio-friendly track -- with the distinctly radio un-friendly title 'How Fucked is That?'-- is the groggy lament of a broken-hearted man 'drunk and down/like a gored rodeo clown'. Other slower tunes, 'Meteor' and 'Neighbors' are dark slices of vengeance and paranoia. Even the upbeat stuff, notably 'Halo in the Headlights' and 'Blackflies' are boogie operas of death and salvation. Lines like 'Feel the Holy Ghost as it tremolos' give you the general idea of Swank's warped confection of guitars, guilt and gospel. Not as creepy as the Cramps but more radio-friendly and, in their own way, just as subversive.
SWANK: THE SURVIVAL ISSUE: The packaging is just as fun as the album. They've thankfully chucked the jewel case, and given you an actual album cover, complete with a book and some of the best twang, surf, gospel and rock on disc anywhere! "Incident At Rock Creek" would be a proud, high energy opening theme to any action flick. "How Do We Do" is a first class gospel-shouter with a bonus guest vocal from the vivacious Ana Bon Bon. "Lost Respects" is a rockin ode to hard times: "No french cuisine, no maitre d', there's only Shake and Bake"..."How F**cked Is That?" is a wonderfully relaxed nod to the terminally shafted in love.
SWANK: THE SURVIVAL ISSUE: The packaging is just as fun as the album. They've thankfully chucked the jewel case, and given you an actual album cover, complete with a book and some of the best twang, surf, gospel and rock on disc anywhere! "Incident At Rock Creek" would be a proud, high energy opening theme to any action flick. "How Do We Do" is a first class gospel-shouter with a bonus guest vocal from the vivacious Ana Bon Bon. "Lost Respects" is a rockin ode to hard times: "No french cuisine, no maitre d', there's only Shake and Bake"..."How F**cked Is That?" is a wonderfully relaxed nod to the terminally shafted in love.
Independant Music Video Awards
Vancouver ANZA Club - Sept 16,17, 2004
#9 How Do We Do?
Victoria Lucky Bar - October 21, 22, 2004
#9 How Do We Do?
Seattle, Sunset Tavern - November 10
#6 How Do We Do?
Because Swank's songs are a marriage of different styles-whiskey drenched country, white lightning rockabilly, and dark old-timey folk-It only makes sense that the band coalesced at a wedding. The gig wasn't the first for the five piece, which has been hanging out for at least a decade. In hindsight, however, It was a major turning point. The pre-ceremony Swank played something of a cross between early alt-rock and lounge. Today, the group writes the kind of material that makes you want to slug back a mickey of Kentucky sour mash, grab the Marlboro red packs and head straight for the badlands of Arizona with Elvis Presley's complete 50's masters in the tape deck. What cemented the change in direction? That's easy - the members of Swank knew they were finally on to something when they looked out at the dance floor and saw it packed with people from age three to 75.
Flashing back four years, Spencer McKinnon figures things could just as easily have gone bad. Swank was asked to play the reception by the bride-to-be, who wasn't all that familiar with the groups repertoire. When the band members learned they'd be playing outdoors in Langley on hay bales, They figured the sensible thing to do was make sure they had a couple of shitkicker tunes to offer. In the two weeks leading up to the big night, Swank managed to master a handful of country greats, including Hank William's "Wedding Bells", Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues", and Tex Ritter's "High Noon". And then, all of a sudden, it was showtime.
"There were cows where we played, just beyond the fence," McKinnon says over beer and pizza at a yaletown brewery. "It was very picturesque, so much so that I felt really good that we were doing country instead of , I don't know , death metal. People were very appreciative, but that may have been because it was an open bar." Taking a slug of nut-brown ale, guitarist and harmonica player Doug Liddle adds: "It was a good show because there was such a wide spectrum of ages and everyone seemed to really like it. We were like 'This is something that really works, and it's fun and entertaining.' That was a good thing because I found our old sound a little ponderous."
Swank has certainly found the right formula on it's debut album, Pappy's Corn Squeezin's. Further proof that Vancouver has one of North America's strongest roots-music scenes, the disc offers a gold rush of songs about the important things in life" trailer parks, Elvis, whiskey, Stompin' Tom and the thrill of riding greased pigs in nothing but a pair of underwear. If that sound's like the band approaches its country with a 100-proof shot of kitsch, it shouldn't-the band approaches its country with the reverence the form deserves but seldom gets. "When I was in my late teens I started collecting Johhny Cash records, "Liddle explains. "In the beginning It was sort of like a joke. but pretty soon the records became less of a novelty. Johnny Cash quickly became an obsession."
Pappy's corn Squeezin's offers plenty to get fixated on: the stellar "Rodeo of Fallen Stars" sounds like a circa-1950 Grand Ole Opry broadcast; "Devil Sway" is all ghostly steel guitar and Louisiana hayride guitars; and "The Canadian Millennium, Whiskey, Rum and Rod & Gun 2001" is every bit as fun as its title. But what really elevates Swank to the city's roots-rock forefront is McKinnon's lyrics. Like the late Jeffrey Lee Pierce, who turned simple words into haunting poetry with the seminal alt-country icons the Gun Club, McKinnon frequently transcends the limitation of verse-chorus-verse, coming up with mini stories that recall long-gone times. Nowhere is that more evident than on the evocative "Fall Fair", which contains such lines as "At night we'll light the bonfire, and we'll burn the wicker man/We'll be dancin' at the bandstand after Sheriff Jim sacrifices the lamb". Later on Pappy's Corn Squeezin's, Sheriff Jim reappears in a song named after him, the lyrics of which include "we've been coverin' our tracks as far as we go back/With a pledge, with a robe, with a knife". Both songs are somehow reminiscent of Stephen King's Children Of The Corn, but McKinnon says they were inspired by a trip to Oregon.
"I was down at a place called Rockaway beach with members of this band called Tug Boat-they go down every year," he says. "It's a weird little place with nothing but a store and a gas station and this guy who runs the store who makes you rinse out your beer bottles before you return them. I remember all these people walking out of the hills with overalls on while we were there. It was really bizarre. They were holding the hands of kids with gumboots on, not even looking at the surf, but staring straight ahead. Anyhow, later on we started writing killing songs around the campfire. That's where Sheriff Jim comes from."
McKinnon may have no problem explaining where Sheriff Jim came from, but both are a little lost for words when asked where they see Swank going. Although Pappy's Corn Squeezin's as one of the great local albums of the past year, the disc has hardly been what you call a high profile release. That's mostly because Swank isn't exactly a band of overachievers. McKinnon and Liddle admit that the group has yet to bother staging a CD release party, and hasn't been terribly tenacious about pursuing gigs. The band has however, received airplay on the CBC, but, for reasons that have nothing to do with listenership, that's unlikely to boost it's profile. "Apparently," says McKinnon with a laugh, "they said 'that was from a record called Swank by a band called Pappy's Corn Squeezin's.'" Swank clearly has a way to go before it's marriage of styles will be truly celebrated.