The Swear: Graveyard Songs
Immediate confession:
For the longest time, in my wallet, I carried around a guitar pick I had thrown at me the first time I ever saw Atlanta rock band The Swear live. It was a gale-force surprise of a show, them being tapped for a last-minute opening slot when my friend and I were head-first into our crush on “where are they now?-indie band edition” boy/girl band The Subways. Suffice to say, The Swear crushed all bands that came before and after. I remember turning to my friend, both our mouths agape as singer Elizabeth Elkins earned the title “frontwoman” again and again, falling to her knees, swinging the mic stand with a swagger befitting Robert Plant, and whispering in his ear “um I think we have a replacement for the Distillers.”
But, yeah, the guitar pick-I’m not one for such obvious acts of fandom from Atlanta bands-I mean, other than R.E.M. or Deerhunter, obviously (Bradford, call me!). That night, though, randomly being introduced to a band that changed the way I thought about what was happening in the Atlanta music scene-that was worth remembering, a night of fortuitous, happy accidents. And so I pocketed the guitar pick flung into the crowd by Elizabeth, and kept it in the change pocket of my wallet, along with a fortune cookie prophecy.
Also, it’s really possible after that first show that I wrote The Swear a fan letter.
Ok, it’s beyond a possibility, it’s the absolutely truth. And Elizabeth Elkins wrote back. (It’d be way cooler if this was pre-email, like if these missives were scribbled on torn sheets of paper, but alas all of this was through the magic of the internet.) We met up at Java Monkey, a, no, THE, coffeeshop on the downtown Decatur square. Given her straight-up rock-and-roll, self-mutilating gale force hurricane of a stage presence, the wait for her to show, with me holding a little reporter’s notebook waiting to jot down notes from any potential conversation, was incredibly unnerving. I mean, I’ve watched bands/artists/DJs do a lot of crazy shit during interviews or meetings, but, waiting for Elizabeth, I, admittedly unreasonably, feared for my personal safety once she arrived-hell, if you’ve seen what she does to guitars, mic stands, or her other band members, you’d have been scared, too.
In person, though Elizabeth Elkins proved to be warm and conversation, almost in a (dare I say it) southern way. We spent more time discussing literature and the music of Tori Amos than anything, and, upon parting, she gave me a copy of the Swear’s E.P. , Every Trick’s A Good One.
Lyrically, studying over each of those songs (particularly my still-favorite, “January”), it was evident how Elkins won the John Lennon songwriting award, and how this unabashedly ROCK, in all caps, frontwoman was versed in Updike and Joyce.
Musically, though….Every Trick’s a Good One lacked something. Some heart, some soul, some grit-all things that shined through their beyond-fierce stage show.
Flash-forward to NOW:
The Swear have an album. Hotel Rooms and Heart Attacks. And it is one of the greatest rock albums to be released by an Atlanta band, but unfortunately sent forth into the ether in a climate where this sort of thing, edgy rawness balanced by pop perfection and melody, is frowned upon from anyone south of the Mason-Dixon line. If The Swear were from New York, say, or L.A., the reviews would call them “rock’s new great hope” (forget how many years now they’ve been fraying edges, blurring the lines and kicking the shit out of amps, they’d still be a “great new hope”). But the Atlanta connection right now is, like The Swear’s name indicates of itself, a promise and a curse.
The Swear: Some Graves Are Stolen
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The songs on Hotel Rooms and Heart Attacks find the guitars chiming and razor-sharp, Jeremy Zamora not afraid to let loose with audible punk swagger and Kevin Williams finding a low-end groove that works in tandem with the rhythm section. This is an album of violence, of death, of passion. Hotel Rooms and Heart Attacks are graveyard songs, songs about drugs and lost lovers and death-but in it, too, you can hear the Atlanta skyline at night. Listen to, for instance, “Some Graves Are Stolen” or “Shuttered Off Christine”-this is the sound of Atlanta after dark. Goth-tinged, yes, but also crystalline. Oddly enough, the best comparison is to driving I-75 into the city on a warm summer night, windows down and Outkast’s Stankonia playing.
Hotel Rooms and Heart Attack’s opener, Vampire, is a mission statement if any rock band has ever written one-in the chorus scream of “you stole my fame”, you hear a band that’s been around the block a million times, has seen it all and has punched it in the face, and they’re clawing, screaming, in ringing violence and gorgeous melodies, to climb to the top.
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Yes, they’re from Atlanta. Yes, they’re a rock band. They’re too gritty for the indiepoppers, too well-done, too talented, too precise and too smart for those who like the sound of garages falling apart. Yes, that means they straddle some very serious lines. And yes, they write dark power-pop songs that read like great literature. A promise and a curse? That is, in fact, The Swear. And they’re screaming for you to listen, That worn, broken scream that emits from Elizabeth on “Deadfall”? That’s real-way more real than 99% of bands coming from the same scene right now. The Swear are fighting for your attention, for your mind and your heart, rather than fighting for you to up them on HypeMachine-how fucking refreshing is that? As one of the interludes on Hotel Rooms and Heart Attacks cautions, “one must be so careful these days”. Give yourself over to the promise and the curse of The Swear and they’ll give it all back, tenfold.
The Swear play Bar Matchless in Brooklyn on Saturday, Oct 10.
