His side-project under the name Instruments Of Science And Technology revealed a fascination with antique electronics, and vintage studio experiments, and this is carried through into his current song-based exploits. It's easy to work out just why he's so highly regarded among his peers: Swift's not only a songwriter in the classic '70s mold, he's also got a real ear for detail when it comes to arrangement. Not only that, but the band's Pat Sansone lends bass to 'Ballad Of Old What's His Name', a song that also features the talents of Ryan Adams, Sean Lennon and - perhaps most bizarrely of all - Mark Ronson. Since his breakthrough album Dressed Up For The Letdown, Richard Swift has managed to earn himself a place among the great and the good of contemporary Americana, having toured with Wilco and found himself recording much of this album in their loft. Swift achieves a remarkable equilibrium between trad songwriting values and innovative (yet comparably old-fashioned) production experiments. The jaunty honky-tonk of 'The Original Thought' is greatly bolstered by the presence of a seemingly out of place chubby synthesizer line that lumbers into the song from out of nowhere, and similarly, there's a space-echo dub undercurrent to the AOR slowjam 'Bat Coma Motown', bringing all kinds of vintage depth to the piece.
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March 2023
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