Post Description

Acoustic folk, rock, indie folk.

Sounds can deceive. What may at first sound easy and comfortable may be a little less so when you listen more closely. Swimming Bell’s second album, Charlie, may not be as simple as it initially appears. Katie Schottland’s release covers time and space as she relocated from New York to California, with tracks written and recorded from both coasts before, during and after the pandemic. Rather than an epic journey, they are a collection of moments reflected in the changing vistas.

Songs with a countrified air and pedal steel sidle up against others that bear little resemblance to those moments, rockier with electric guitars firing off charged riffs. Singing songs filled with attempts to find a sense of connection, she examines people and places that sometimes don’t completely track the way one’s brain does. The Carnival looks at how odd that can be, “Everyone’s in magazines, smiling back at me/ oh what a strange world it is.” Despite those mysterious notions of perfection one can find in magazines, there are also moments that burn deeply. Sadness fills the strings of the guitar, and the horn playing of Kyle Resnik blazes a refrain, touching the soul of a woman wanting a second chance that will never come in I Believe in Us. “Say you love me, so how about you love me it’s so easy to pretend/ Man, I wish we were strangers now, so I could meet you again.” Sometimes, things just don’t go the way you planned them.

There’s a sense of the epic in Take It Easy, even as the song tells a smaller tale of two folks falling in love. Gentle guitars begin colouring the track. Slowly, other instruments enter the frame, voices double, giving the song a larger quality, just as the tune takes on a larger sense of the reality filling their relationship, “We’re looking through their window/ All the disco lights/ I said it looks like for now we’re doing something right.”

While some of the colours of the California countryside provide a musical context, producer and engineer Oli Deakin playing guitar and bass, Morgan Karabel on drums, Kyle Resnik’s horns and Tim Kelly’s pedal steel spend a lot of time adding shades not necessarily found in the 80s west-coast songbook. Making these songs swing a little differently by using hues just outside the norm serves Schottland and her songs well.

Taking a deliberately alternative musical path, singing and playing with colours not often found in the scheme, Charlie establishes its own parameters, helping Swimming Bell transcend simple labels to create a sound all its own.

Tracks:
01. I Believe in Us
02. Take It Easy
03. For Al and Lee
04. Company
05. Ash in the Jar
06. Born Wild
07. Fly Like An Eagle
08. Dekalb Ave
09. The Carnival
10. Just Begun

Staat er compleet op, 10% pars mee gepost. Met zeer veel dank aan de originele poster. Laat af en toe eens weten wat je van het album vindt. Altijd leuk, de mening van anderen. Oh ja, MP3 doe ik niet aan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeEcqqeeFRY