When I say the Black Swans' new songs are "haunted," I mean that as literally as the word can be interpreted. After the Columbus, Ohio, band finished recording its second album Change!, violinist Noel Sayre died suddenly in a swimming pool accident in July 2008. He left a laptop full of recordings-- some incidental music, some snippets of melody-- which singer-songwriter Jerry DeCicca incorporated into the Black Swans' follow-up, Words Are Stupid. That's Sayre setting the scene on opener "Blurk", adding dramatic eddies of violin to "Open Sky", and kazooing on "Kazood". He remains only a glimmer at the edges of the music-- present and pointedly not present-- but it's not the tragedy of his death that makes this strange, smart, soulful album resonate so darkly. His playing has always been crucial to the band's sound, adding a dusky ambience to DeCicca's world-weary croak and bluesy, brainy lyrics. Why wouldn't these found sounds do the same?
Words Are Stupid has an unusual life of its own. The album was commissioned by St. Ives as a meditation on the fallibility and malleability of language. It will be released exclusively on vinyl and limited to only 200 copies, each with a slightly different photo on the cover. The Black Swans' undertake this assignment with the same mix of gusto and gravity they've applied to all their releases, generating a dark country backdrop for DeCicca's playful lyrics. It's an album with a thesis, but it never becomes weighted down with semantics. Ultimately, it argues that words are not stupid so much as tragically insufficient to express the enormity of even everyday emotions, much less overwhelming feelings of loss like the one this band has suffered. On this alternately humorous and heartbreaking album, the Black Swans realize that music can do what words cannot.
With a blurt that sounds not unlike an Americanized Stuart Staples, DeCicca's lyrics tread a fine line between ridiculous and revelatory as he slips in and out of a variety of roles and guises. Despite doing everything from building a joke around a rooster's crow or singing about comic strips like "Marmaduke" or "The Wizard of Id", DeCicca makes his words mean a lot. His work as a producer-- for the Black Swans as well as for Moviola and Larry Jon Wilson-- gives him a nuanced grasp of mood and depth, sketching out intricate settings with only a few instruments and notes. The closely mic'ed guitar on "Day at the Park of Roses" swells with the intensity of Low and the purposefulness of Tindersticks, but the ebb and flow of that industrial buzz in the background lends the song a menace that belies the pleasantries implied by its title. "Black Swans Tango" is a mostly spoken-word account of going deaf in Buenos Aires and reading Borges, set to a rustic South American rhythm that's not quite a tango, but a memory of one. The tale culminates in one of the album's most thematically and emotionally satisfying moments, as DeCicca plays a solo on a comb and wax paper-- an improvised instrument intent on "moving you without words."
