Audio By Carbonatix
Speaking about the work of the San Francisco-based band known as Swell, bassist Monte Vallier says, “I think it’s really colorful music, and I hope listeners would just let it take them away on a journey. Or else put it in the car stereo, open all the windows and drive down a big, long, straight road really fast at night. We try to create a Swell atmosphere.”
At that, Swell succeeds–grandly. The music made by this trio of mood-setting experimentalists (Vallier, guitarist/vocalist David Freel and drummer Sean Kirkpatrick) is both multifaceted and subtle. Instead of assembling ditties that are primarily concerned with moving and shaking, as do so many of their rock-and-roll brethren, Swell composes pieces that cause listeners to conjure mental images as evocative as the songs themselves.
That’s not to imply that Swell’s sound is at all new-agey; Songs of the Humpback it ain’t. Rather, the band’s approach might be described as urban folk. Freel, whose style has been likened to Lou Reed’s, delivers his lyrics in a morose, deadpan voice that perfectly complements the band’s material, which is played at a generally creeping pace that’s simultaneously unsettling and peaceful.
Swell’s new CD, 41, is the latest of three albums that came to life in the group’s former warehouse/office/recording studio, located on the second level of a building in the heart of San Francisco’s notorious Tenderloin district. Although the area is known for its junkies, prostitutes and dilapidated buildings, Vallier claims that the band settled in the Tenderloin for economic reasons; the rent there was ridiculously low. But what began as an endurance test eventually contributed to the band’s muse. In fact, the title of the just-released album is taken from the warehouse’s address.
“The neighborhood is such that you’re really scared about where you parked, thinking your car is going to be broken into,” Vallier recounts. “You have to expect that it will. Then you ask the crack smokers to step out of your way so you can open the door, step over somebody sleeping and go up the stairs inside. When you lock the door, it’s like safety–it’s like a fortress.”
With its boarded-up windows and a sixty-foot-long blue velvet drape covering one wall, the facility looked exactly like what it was–a former USO dance hall. Equally memorable was another of the building’s business tenants. “Our space was on the second floor above a transvestite bar,” Vallier notes. “But not a regular transvestite bar in the San Francisco sense: It was a bar for old, retired transvestites. The guys were about 55 or 60 years old and they looked like Popeye, but with big tits. We used to hang out there and play pool, and this sort of atmosphere just seeped into the music.”
The results, as heard on 41, provide listeners with an aural tour of the warehouse studio and the world beyond it. The first and last tracks are respectively titled “In the Door, Up the Stairs” and “Down the Stairs, Out the Door,” and they include the sounds of keys rattling and footsteps shuffling. The songs in between promote introspection. For example, “Is That Important?” builds from a minimalist acoustic introduction to a concluding passage dominated by sweaty bursts of controlled sonic chunks.
Currently, many of the band’s most rabid followers hail from Europe. Vallier feels that fans there see music as a more precious commodity than do U.S. residents. “CDs are so expensive in Europe,” he says. “So when people actually buy one, they really listen to it and cherish it. They buy less and spend more time with each one. It’s great. In places like France, the audience really listens–and they tear us apart. I mean, they’ll come up to us after a show and ask us, `What did you mean when you said “little green car”?’ They really get into the music.”
Of course, the members of Swell also hope more Amer-icans will find the time to investigate their art. To that end, the bandmembers have moved beyond their songs in an effort to fashion a complete aesthetic. Even though they’ve been signed to a major label (American), the players continue to generate their own album artwork and press kits as well as oversee marketing efforts aimed at promoting the group. They also publish Swollen, a fanzine complete with games, letters, framable photos and reviews of other bands. It’s free to anyone who contacts the group, so long as supplies of the publication have not been exhausted.
Now that’s a Swell deal.
Swell, with Madder Rose. 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 20, Mercury Cafe, 2199 California Street, $8, 294-9281 or 290-
