Enemy Mine out now!

Today is the day folks, the brand new Swan Lake record Enemy Mine is officially released!

If you haven’t bought it yet, go to Jagjaguwar or Insound now!

Modern Songwriters

I can’t believe I forgot to post this, but I guess it’s better late than never. Carey Mercer recently posted to his blog a rather detailed (and hysterical) description of what went on during the recording process of Enemy Mine. Here’s just a small taste, you can read the full post here.

We did a second round of singing and plinking in Vancouver, at JC/DC studio, in April 2008. I felt comfortable there. I had one great experience at JC/DC. Let me write it down if I can. Dan was off reading Paul Reiser’s Fatherhood, or grabbing a pizza, and Spencer was in the singing room. JC and DC were out of town. So, on this day, I was without qualification the master of the control room.

I was rolling around the floor, rolling in freedom, rolling because the control chair has wheels. I had my feet up on the computer like Spider-man’s boss. I was in charge. We were working on one of Dan’s songs—I think it’s called “Ballad of a Swan Lake”. The last two minutes of the song is chiefly Spencer and I wailing “I sat down / and took a number / at the table where / death resides”

What a beautiful line. It’s courageous, and noir, and of course very funny. I walked around for months softly singing this song this one line: it puts a lilt in my step. I felt lucky.

Listen to Swan Lake

photo cred: Jody Rogac

A few sites have tracks from Enemy Mine up for download/stream.
Pitchfork has ‘A Hand at Dusk’ up here.
Spin has ‘Spider’ up here.

Stereogum has ‘Spanish Gold, 2044′ up here. They spoke to Carey Mercer about the track:

After listening a few times, the “bullwhip by the nightstand” really stands out lyrically.
I’ve had that lyric floating around in my mind for a few years. I think it addresses zones of violence and non-violence. One of my students is from Rio de Janiero. She told our class that when she goes home she has to force herself to remember that she is not in a place where she can, for example, walk around with her iPod, because it is an open invitation for someone to rob her. This reality, in a zone of violence, is simply not a reality in my city, which is a relative zone of non-violence. So the lyric kind of addresses this zonal dichotomy, but to the extreme right? I mean, what could be more peaceful and fucking representative of peace then Juilliard, a zone solely devoted to churning out/refining young genuises of art? And kids, young genuises, come from around the world right? So what is it like when you get home, if you live in a zone of violence? If your home is Mexico City or Rio or Baghdad but you’ve been living in this bubble of a dorm room for three years refining your violin genius, how does it feel to return to “reality” after this experience? It must be incredibly hard!

What’s the significance of the title “Spanish Gold, 2044″?
Spanish Gold 2044 is both a reference to the “Kokomo”-like Matthew McConaughey-style back-ups that I begged Dan and Spencer to do, which they loved to do, given our collective love of old “NO SHIRT NO PROBLEM,” and it is a reference to that aforementioned “Adventure-weapon” bullwhip lyric. I am making fun of myself. All of my songs are a balance between serious, heavy-handed statements about “society,” and then making fun of myself for making these statements in song.

Enemy Mine is not yet available for pre-order and is due out March 24th on Jagjaguwar.

we’re back

Sorry for the delay folks, just a bit of technical difficulty. Over the weekend I contacted a few blogs to get the word out about the Swan Lake petition. You can read about it at BrooklynVegan, CBC Radio 3, Exclaim, Trendwhore, and a bunch of others. Thank you so much to all the blogs, here’s hoping we can get to 1000 signatures in the next few weeks.

Stereogum.com recently spoke with Spencer Krug about the myriad of projects he’s working on, including the upcoming Sunset Rubdown record:

Right now he’s editing songs and doing some re-recording at his home, and says the record will be done by the end of this month (just in time for his vacation in Mexico). Perhaps to avoid the “second guessing” he thinks had a negative effect on Random Spirit Lover, Krug and the rest of Sunset Rubdown recorded all the instruments live “on the floor.” “I like these kinds of recordings because they’re very honest and it’s hard to pretend that you sound any different from whatever it is,” he says. He’s also recorded two songs (“Insane Love Awakening” and “Coming To At Dawn”) for a friend’s 7″ series, to be released whenever his friend wants to. He expects the Sunset Rubdown record out in early summer. After that album, he’s planning another, more idiosyncratic record that he’s been working on for two years: an EP of marimba and drum songs. “[It's] an instrument that I’ve always liked, but I’ve never had the patience to bring on the road or even try recording,” he says. “I don’t think it’s the coolest move for my ’street cred,’ but it’s a beautiful sounding instrument, what can I say?”

New Handsome Furs tour dates:

03-06 Mercury Lounge NYC (tickets on sale 1/30 @ 12 noon)
03-20 SXSW Insound Party
04-08 Cargo London, UK
04-10 Motel Mozaique Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands
04-11 La Maroquinerie Paris
04-12 Domino Festival Brussels

news news news

Just in case you haven’t heard, Handsome Furs have a new record coming out called Face Control. I already posted that you can pre order the record from Insound.com. However that was before Insound released a separate digital pre order offer which includes a t shirt printed with the design above. The shirt is designed by Andy Dixon from The Chemistry Designs. Handsome Furs just performed at the Sundance Film festival and soon will be on their way to Berlin to start their 2009 world tour!

Spencer Krug writes and plays in Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, and Swan Lake. Oh and now he’s also a published short story writer. Krug’s short story ‘Waterside Planting’ is part of The Lifted Brow’s fake bookshelf project. You can read the story on our forum here.

Speaking of Swan Lake, have you signed the petition yet??

Swan Lake tour?

photo cred: me

The other day I came across an interesting bit of news on the Jagjaguwar website. The post was in regards to Swan Lake’s new record ‘Enemy Mine’ coming out March 24th. I assumed it was just a press release, however at the very bottom of the post read the following:

SWAN LAKE does not currently have any tour plans but is easily swayed by gold doubloons and/or enthusiastic mobs.

This sentence inspired me to create an online petition entitled ‘Lets get Swan Lake to Tour’. Although there are misspellings, the general idea is to essentially get enough signatures to constitute a mob and therefore persuade the band to tour. So please sign the petition and help us to get Swan Lake to a town near you!

Enemy Mine

Photo by Jody Rogac

A new bio for Swan Lake has surfaced with more details about their new record Enemy Mine:

Swan Lake is the musical group featuring celebrated songwriter-mystics Daniel Bejar (of Destroyer and New Pornographers), Spencer Krug (of Sunset Rubdown and Wolf Parade) and Carey Mercer (of Frog Eyes and Blackout Beach). Together they recorded Enemy Mine, their nine-song second album, in Victoria, British Columbia, in early 2008, a little more than a year after the release of their well-received debut collaboration, Beast Moans, also on Jagjaguwar.

While their debut album was a beautifully-weaved mash-up of their disparate song-writing styles, often with layer upon layer of various melodies and stylistics thrown into a collaborative cauldron to magical, and at times discordant effect, their second album Enemy Mine reflects a more strippeddown, more deliberate approach to collaboration. It’s as if they really tried to just make nice songs together. To quote Krug, “There’s architecture here.” Not that the lyric is about collaboration—it fits nicely though.

It is the band’s contention that this is the first known use of a “court painting” as a record cover used in popular music. As a result of this enthusiasm, the band had planned on calling the album Before the Law, a beloved Kafka parable and a reference to this court painting. However, the band is tired of being tagged as “literary”, so they dubbed the record Enemy Mine, a beloved movie from Bejar’s youth, and a good metaphor for collaboration.
__________
From SC Distrobution:
Enemy Mine will be released in both CD and LP formats. There will also be a pre-order campaign with stores and through mailorder, allowing consumers to immediately receive MP3s of the album with pre-order purchase. The LP will contain a digital download coupon for free MP3s of the full album.

Thanks to ededitedit for posting this on the forum.

news news news

Sorry for the delay folks, we were having some technical problems. The big news this week is the announcement of the second Swan Lake record entitled ‘Enemy Mine’. At this time there is no official word from Jagjaguwar about this release. Therefore, the unofficial release date is March 24th, 2009, and here is the unofficial tracklist:

1. Spanish Gold, 2044
2. Paper Lace
3. Heartswarm
4. Settle on Your Skin
5. Ballad of a Swan Lake, Or, Daniel’s Song
6. Peace
7. Spider
8. A Hand at Dusk
9. Warlock Psychologist

Here’s a post from Carey Mercer’s Blog about the cover art:

Enemy Mine: I think that it is the first time a band has ever used a “court painting” as a record cover. I bought this painting in Penticton, BC, where my wife Melanie grew up. It’s hot in the summer: you go to the lake, or you go to town and walk around the air-conditioned antique shops. There are lots of old people in Penticton. It has been an old person mecca for years, so the antique stores are a treasure trove of cool stuff. The above painting was hanging on a wall beside a portrait of Prince Charles. I only had twenty-five dollars. Both paintings were priced at fourty-five dollars. I love Prince Charles–he’s so regal and handsome. But I also love stories, and mysteries, and this painting has a lot of mystery. I talked the proprietor down to twenty-five dollars. I am still waiting on compensation from the rest of the band and the label for my expense, despite several stern emails and legal warnings. I love the way that no one is looking at each other. Post-Script: The back cover is a photograph of a court-room in Prague by Vancouver photographer Chris Frey. It’s quite beautiful and nebulous.

In our last post, we stated that the release date for the new Handsome Furs record, Face Control had been pushed back to March 10th, 2009. According to a reliable source, the reason for the push back is rather interesting. It seems that the Furs have referenced a New Order song in the track ‘All We Want, Baby, Is Everything’ (aka Heaven). In order to use the reference, the band needed to legally clear it with New Order. This took some time to do and caused the release to be pushed back. The Furs have also added a new tour date to their current European tour with more tour dates on the way. To see a full list of Handsome Fur’s tour dates, check their tour dates section.