Raised by Swans @ The Garrison

March 9th, 2010

raised by swans

This Raised by Swans review story really starts two years ago, during Canadian Music Week (wooo CMW!). My buddy and I, after getting so psyched by listening to the band’s MySpace before the show, spent an entire evening hanging out at Rancho Relaxo waiting to hear a band whose car ended up breaking down in Woodstock and never even made it to Toronto. I confess, I may have shed a single tear.

Flash to two years later! The release of their second album seemed like an excellent opportunity to finally check that “See Raised by Swans” box on my “to-do” list, so off we treked to the Garrison last Thursday. I am pleased to say that, in short, the two year wait was well worth it.

Here’s why…

Raised by Swans excel in creating gorgeous ambient soundscapes of heartbreaking indecision, hope against the odds, disillusionment, and dogged perseverance, bolstered by Eric Howden’s gently drifting vocals and Alex Wright’s scintillating guitar riffs. Songs that sound like the moment you realize that even though you never really liked him/her anyway and they have stupid hair, you’re still going to spend two weeks thinking about the streetlight you stopped and talked under at three in the morning about how you’re sure no one else on the planet breathes the exact way the two of you do, but only when no one else is around.

Haunting atmospherics aside, if the music sounds familiar to you, well, there might be a good reason. The band has had their music featured on television shows like CTV’s “Whistler” and MTV’s “Peak Season” (coincidence?), in a couple of Atom Egoyan movies, and in a Douglas Coupland film called Everything’s Gone Green.

But No Ghostless Place, their most recent release, has its stand-out moments too, as the Garrison show proved. The band chose to open their set with the wistful “We Were Never Young”, that served to transport the audience to a place where voices speak softly and disappointment can still be beautiful, before picking up the pace with the jumping-into-cold-water shock of album stand-out “Hail of Arrows”. New favourites (“Old Fires”) and old favourites (“Sandcastles”) were played with the same level of perfection I’ve come to expect from ~~my Raised by Swans CD~~ the band: no hiccups, no screw ups, just pure audio bliss.

Throughout the set, the Swans kept their banter brief and the music steady, only breaking to do the polite-Canadian thing and thank their support acts, Carnival Moon and Pink Moth, half a dozen times. The crowd, as I mentioned, who were already drifting on a wonderfully-layered wave of sound, didn’t appear to mind.

The band concluded the set with “Violet Light”, the song that’s pretty much been everywhere (because it’s that good), and got the most cheers out of the audience. However, whether it was because it was Thursday or because of the venue, rabid music fans (me), were left to only dream of an encore. That said, it was a really awesome dream.

Set List
We Were Never Young
Hail of Arrows
Relentless
Easier
Capable of Cruelty
Secret Garden / S.C
Old Fires
Longer Shadows, Shorter Days
Sandcastles
The Waiting’s Over
Still Inside You
There’s Hope Yet
How Do These Hearts Unfold
Violet Light

You can catch the band on their cross-Canada tour in May, or in Orangeville at The Wellington Room next Saturday.

Raised by Swans’ Myspace
RaisedbySwans.com

Tags: concert reviews, concerts, correspondents, raised by swans, reviews