Would that we typists could forego consumer-report linearity as we survey Swan Lake, opting instead in our reviews, as the act does in its songs, to isolate and juxtapose-- and then to isolate by juxtaposition-- loaded fragments, pleas, and images. Because holy hell, Beast Moans establishes a high that will likely inspire mimicry in its listeners. You'll be jotting down phrases that you hear throughout your day as if they were signs from the universe, just as this album's relentless reverb, sustain, and vibrato suggest that an act of creation is merely a series of echoes.
Swan Lake is of course a Supergroup McSideproject of folks already equipped with supergroups and side projects. Like the best work of its participants, Beast Moans is no pornographer's rubdown; it delivers on its tease. The Dan Bejar/Spencer Krug/Carey Mercer triple-team performs spirographic sprints around, say, Amalgamated Sons of Rest, the 2003 Will Oldham/Jason Molina/Alasdair Roberts gangwarble. In the event that you are an anxious consolidator of last.fm stats trying to weed out fluke acts, you might switch "Swan Lake" to "Destroyer" in the artist-blank and not totally be lying, since Frog Eyes have already backed Dan Bejar, and Bejar's preoccupations seem to win the album's field day: "A Venue Called Rubella", as the title hints, plays like an outtake from Rubies (okay, like a trippy, prancing alternate take of "3000 Flowers") and its lyrical shout-out to Streethawk continues Bejar's habit of mythologizing his own discography, which he, um, continues via "The Freedom"'s repine for City of Daughters.
Each performer gets a star turn on Beast Moans, and "The Freedom" is Bejar's; it's basically a Destroyer anthem, which means that it's made of pieces of countless other people's anthems, but boasting stunner lyrics and a chorus about much more than Swan Lake yet still about Swan Lake: "The freedom to be alone with the freedom" addresses not having to share, and this album's whole experiment is to approach fellowship as a formal constraint. When Bejar, Krug, and Mercer fade into each other, as they do on "City Calls" and "Pleasure Vessels", a magical fourth man's marrow seems to arise from the psych blandishments and obscure passion. Several other tracks even suggest that they were striving to become male, analog-ambient, goth-scatting Cocteau Triplets, using rock's la's, da's, ah's, ooh's, oh's, and whoah's (with a dash of Nintendo) to speak in tongues, structuring careful laments that impersonate unfettered lamentations.
That great not-American source of American imagery, the Bible, is responsible for a shocking number of lines. Also unexpected are the earthbound love songs. Equally freshening is how many tracks are woman-centric, although who knows if all of these sisters, daughters, mothers, widows, "Pollenated Girls", and lovers have actual referents or are just radiant furniture in a cosmology of longing. The fabulous Krug-led fable "All Fires" best blends the album's conceits, as a wife loses a daughter, a church is torn apart, Eve's origin is invoked, and a Theresa gets the mother/saint/martyr treatment.
Pretending to discuss the lyrics is a sad surrender, though, because anyone attempting to decode them is going to lose the songwriters' rigged game of "guess which finger I'm holding up behind the tapestry." The album's swathy textures deserve as much credit as the vocal shrieks for making its pomp and mystery so enjoyable. The lazy-susan approach to antic and mellow tones, the blend of trad-strumming with a panicked, not-altogether-Western approach to guitar, the shifts from church organs to carnival organs, and the unpredictable percussion combine to suggest that with Beast Moans, these yelpy brainiacs have cornered their collective animal. The album's thesislessness and almost-annoying beauty earn spittoonfuls of odd gratitude.
