Richard Swift - Walt Wolfman

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release

4...according to our Clinton on Fri 14 Oct, 2011.

Richard Swift has produced a lot of really well received records without properly catching my ear. From the opening chords here, you know you are dealing with someone who knows what they are doing. It sounds not unlike a chirpier, less beer sodden Richard Hawley. With the jingling sounds and high pitched back up vocals (could be children?) it sounds very Christmassy. Swifts voice is not that fantastic, thin and reedy, strained in the upper register, but the tune is so good he gets away with it. The second track has a superb, roomy Joe Meek like production with clattering drums, whistles and bells and someone doing a Marvin Gaye impression over the top. Superb stuff, Swift toys with Northern Soul yet the whole thing has an eerie feel to it like those terrifying futuristic '60s instrumentals. Track three goes full on into Diana Ross and the Supremes mode - Swift is unafraid of being daring and potentially looking like an idiot - he pulls it off magnificently coming on all Smokey Robinson. Throughout, the record is a whole heap of '60s inspired fun.

• Where does anyone start with Richard Swift?

• A true maverick musician, a one in a generation type of songwriter who can turn his hand to anything and make it his own.

• This vinyl only mini album was borne after he horrifically fractured his hand a year ago, prompting worries he would never play again.

• It’s with a great, collective sigh of relief that he’s back to churning out new material like ‘Whitman’.

• It’s chugging, chiming and triumphant, featuring Swift’s always-endearing falsetto and casual call- and-response lyricism.

• The song is a cryptic salute to Walt Whitman, whose American lineage of primal, urgent art can be traced to include Kerouac and Dylan, Bo Diddley and Beefheart — right on through to modern outsider-pop wunderkinds like Swift.

• According to Swift, ‘Whitman’ is a nice taste of what we can expect from his next longform recording.

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