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Stumbling upon Swirlies for the first time felt like striking gold. They\u2019re a band that begs to be discovered by digging through the dollar bin of your favorite record store and stumbling upon a worn cassette, or overhearing some conversation deep in the bowels of a friend of a friend\u2019s house party where the acts are paid in beer. I wish I could say that\u2019s how I discovered Swirlies, but like everyone else these days, I\u2019m a victim to my streaming algorithm, which miraculously fed me Blonder Tongue Audio Baton, Swirlies\u2019 full-length debut album. For once, I\u2019m a little grateful for the virtual Big Brother looking over my shoulder. <\/p>\n
The band was formed in Boston in 1990, an American response to the British shoegaze scene fostered by Cocteau Twins, my bloody valentine, and Slowdive<\/a>. Guitarists Seana Carmody and Damon Tutunjian were introduced by their mutual friend Rusty Nails, who wanted to start a Go-Go\u2019s cover band\u2014an effort that, tragically (for me, at least), never panned out. Eventually, they dropped the concept, enlisted Tutunjian\u2019s high school friend, Andy Bernick, to play bass and MIT student Ben Drucker to drum, and became a band all their own. The group signed to punk label Taaang! in 1992 and, with the help of producer Rich Costey (Fiona Apple, Foo Fighters, Muse), put out Blonder Tongue Audio Baton the following year.<\/p>\n Call it an eye for aesthetics, call it a shallow judgment of a book by its cover\u2014but, admittedly, the reason I initially clicked on the album was my fascination with its cover art. The image, created by the band\u2019s frequent collaborator, Ron Rege Jr., is an esoteric collage compiled from what seems like a half-filled medical form, grainy photographs, and thick-drawn permanent marker. The use of collage is a conscious acknowledgement of the band\u2019s tendency towards patchwork arrangements; most songs are strung together from extensive samples, bits of muffled dialogue, and whatever random equipment the band could get their hands on. Most notably, Swirlies wore down an audio graphic equalizer from Blonder Tongue Labs while tracking each song\u2014hence the album\u2019s name. <\/p>\n Blonder Tongue only produced that EQ for three years (1959-1961), making it still feel serendipitous that the band even got their hands on it to begin with. But it\u2019s a good thing they did: the record\u2019s vast array of frequencies results in a unique sound that is at once deeply roomy and woefully tinny. The tried-and-true shoegaze sound of \u201cJeremy Parker,\u201d for instance, takes a meandering journey from its start as a coarse distortion vehicle. The song\u2019s third act finds the lead guitar fading out and gasping for breath, with Carmody whispering, \u201cone, two, three\u201d in a hushed cue for the subsequent strums to follow her lead. <\/p>\n Swirlies seems to live in between the analog skew of \u201890s DIY and the impending electronic surge of the dawning digital age. They haven\u2019t yet hit the online fame of their shoegaze counterparts a la my bloody valentine or Slowdive, but it feels like the youth might just be ready for Blonder Tongue Audio Baton. I have an ally in Wednesday<\/a>\u2019s Karly Hartzman to support this hypothesis, as she recently told<\/a> Pitchfork that the album was her selection for the site\u2019s Perfect 10 series. She noted that Swirlies is not a lyrics band; oftentimes, a given song\u2019s distortion strips words of their consonants, making the lyrics feel more like a collection of sounds. It\u2019s a common shoegaze phenomenon, with bands like Cocteau Twins even being known to make up words in their songs. <\/p>\n I agree with Hartzman on some level\u2014Swirlies\u2019 arrangements are the draw of their music, yes\u2014but their lyrics are not to be scoffed at, either. They\u2019re fresh and freaky and sometimes arcane, yet always deceptively great. \u201cHis Love Just Washed Away\u201d houses some of the band\u2019s most colorful storytelling. Tutunjian intones visceral lines like \u201cThe daughter\u2019s head keeps spinning like a spiral shell\u201d over a jangly guitar that rings like a cracked bell. The track is shaped like an upside-down parabola, rising in energy as the stakes heighten\u2014\u201cHe found her body on the seashore\u201d\u2014then breaking like a wave on the sleepy outro. Carmody\u2019s final refrain of \u201cwashed away\u201d feels itself washed away into oblivion, as if she herself is the girl on the shore lamenting her fate. <\/p>\n The vocabulary of Swirlies is vast and evocative, populated with imagery and references. The track \u201cPark the Car by the Side of the Road\u201d takes its title from the Smiths\u2019 \u201cThat Joke Isn\u2019t Funny Anymore,\u201d and while the tracks are sonically worlds away, Swirlies pull from The Smiths\u2019 self-effacing oeuvre. Tutunjian bluntly sings, \u201cHey, it would be so good to die here with you\u201d as if rephrasing the chorus of \u201cThere is a Light that Never Goes Out\u201d\u2014albeit with a darker spin, considering the lines \u201cShe\u2019s got a gun in her drawer that\u2019s meant for me.\u201d Other lyrics are less overt in their allusions, instead housing a collection of erratic imagery. The whirlwind track \u201cVigilant Always,\u201d begins with the line, \u201cpneuma has left me,\u201d referring to the ancient Greek term for breath, spirit, or soul. The song\u2019s narrator is as troubled as its subject, a girl with \u201ca noise in her heart \/ and it\u2019s fucking her up.\u201d I can\u2019t help but feel Swirlies\u2019 goal is to push you to that same place; the rapidity with which they change tempos, add and subtract noise, and linger in silence is enough to induce a kind of musical whiplash. Swirlies ride on the synergy between the percussion and guitar, both of which seem to operate completely on their own time. Each time I near the end of the song, which bounces back from a quiet period into a rowdy, intense jam, I feel delightfully fucked up, devoid of my own supply of pneuma.<\/p>\n Blonder Tongue Audio Baton truly feels like lightning caught in a bottle. For several reasons, the group never made another project like it\u2014most notably, it was Carmody\u2019s last full-length with the band before forming her own group, Syrup USA. While Swirlies surely took inspiration from the thrumming, distorted sounds of British shoegaze, I\u2019m always amazed at how fresh they sound. Their take on the genre never feels sludgy or lethargic, but constantly alight with frenetic energy. That vitality comes from the buzzing excitement of discovery, from the band\u2019s pleasure in twiddling with a Minimoog for the first time or toying with a Casio VL-5. Their enthusiasm is contagious\u2014I can\u2019t count the number of times I\u2019ve played a song from Blonder Tongue in the car and seen a friend\u2019s face light up with surprised interest. For every shoegaze, post-punk, or experimental rock enthusiast, there\u2019s a pre-Swirlies world and a post-Swirlies world. I\u2019m delighted to live in the latter. <\/p>\n