Swanmay Premiere ‘Live Session’ Video; New LP Later This Year
Posted in Bootleg Theater on January 27th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
This Friday, Jan. 29, Linz, Austria’s Swanmay will release the three-songer Live Session EP. It is a follow-up to 2017’s debut long-player, Stoner Circus (review here), and as the title hints, they recorded it live, audio and video. The clip, which runs 17:33 total, finds the three-piece playing facing the camera as though on a stage, in an attic-looking room with fabric on the wall, a Tibetan flag on one side, tapestry behind, a setlist on the other, some soft lights and a not-necessarily-minor fortune’s worth of amplifiers and cabinets behind them. Spelled out in tape behind guitarist/vocalist Patrick Àlvaro — joined by bassist/backing vocalist Chri Zao and drummer Niklas Lueger — is the word “ciao,” with an upside-down star on the cab underneath. Ciao indeed, gentlemen.
The idea behind Live Session is to bridge between the first Swanmay album four years ago and the second to come sometime later in 2021. The first record is represented by “Lake on Fire,” which closes out this short set, while the prior “Stone Cold” and “Old Trails” are new. The opener rolls out at an immediately fluid pace, a midtempo push that picks up as the chorus departs from the verse, warmth abounding in the fuzzy guitar and bass tones. Live though it is, Live Session is nonetheless well mixed, and though one gets a sense of how the band might sound on stage with the brooding vocals and desert-style crash, it doesn’t sound as raw as the prospect of band-videoing-themselves-in-what-might-be-their-rehearsal-space implies. “Old Trails” is shorter, with more initial tension in the lead riff, and moves toward a righteously heavy payoff — dig that bass — in its second half, giving hints all the while of airier notions of guitar before the sudden stop leads Swanmay to the familiar “Lake on Fire” from the first LP.
You know, the band did actually play the Austrian festival, Lake on Fire, in 2017, after the record came out, and the song’s lyrics could easily be read as a theme for that event, which takes place outdoors and sets up a stage over the water lakeside at Waldhausen im Strudengau — making, if nothing else, for a slew of idyllic pictures and videos. It’s a catchy hook either way and serves well to wrap the set here with a nod toward better times for those who know what they’re talking about. Which, if it didn’t before, includes you now, so right on.
Whatever the release plan for Swanmay‘s sophomore outing might be, it’s yet to be announced, but they lock in a groove for Live Session and don’t let it go, and the varying sides they show in the two new songs bode well for what’s coming whenever it might actually show up. Band rockin’? That’s good enough for me, let’s do it.
Clip follows here. Enjoy:
Swanmay, Live Session Official Video Premiere
SWANMAY is back, ready to set your ears on fire again!
Since releasing their critically acclaimed full length STONER CIRCUS in 2017, SWANMAY kept themselves busy, playing festivals and shows all over Europe. After a few (virus-related) months of silence, the fuzzheads are back in a new formation, with a new record in tow.
To shorten the waiting time for the new album, they recorded a live-session in their doomy rehearsal room containing three songs, two of them brand new.
Stay tuned for the release later this year!
Tracklisting:
1. Stone Cold
2. Old Trails
3. Lake On Fire
all songs written & played by Swanmay
recorded & mastered by Dario Köstinger & Mastered by DK
mixed by Niklas Lueger
filmed by Fabi Krenn
