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Beast Moans

by

Swan Lake

 
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Beast Moans
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Avg: 3.5 (180 ratings)

The vocalists behind Destroyer, Wolf Parade and Frog Eyes get together for a pow-wow

  • We Say...

    Review by Andy Battaglia

    Swan Lake is a conglomeration of three Canadian songwriters with similarly healthy, hectic reputations. Daniel Bejar makes his name as the leader of Destroyer (and as a member of The New Pornographers); Spencer Krug heads the march for Wolf Parade; and Carey Mercer helps find the focus for Frog Eyes. Together, they engage in a collaboration that trades in all the combative, conciliatory tension that true collaboration builds. Fans of the three bigger bands will hear traces of their provenance, but Swan Lake sounds murkier and moodier than any of the separate entities on their own. “City Calls” is typical for the way it churns and hisses like a cauldron in which juices from Destroyer, Wolf Parade and Frog Eyes drip and change phase into something more ethereal. “Venue Called Rubella” hews toward Canterbury psychedelia — all reverbed guitar and carnival organ — before drifting into repeated incantations of a song title significant mostly for its word-sound properties. All the way through, Beast Moans sounds like three friends sitting together on worn-out rugs with piles of guitars and tambourines to play with when the mood strikes.

  • They Say...

    Review by Marisa Brown, All Music Guide

    Canada has certainly been the hot spot for indie bands in the new millennium, so the fact that the singers from three of the biggest (Dan Bejar from Destroyer, Spencer Krug from Wolf Parade, and Carey Mercer from Frog Eyes) came together in Swan Lake has been -- while perhaps not much of a surprise (the idea of a "collective" being quite a popular idea up north, coupled with the fact that the three have been working together in some form or another for the past few years) -- enough to thoroughly excite the hipsters, who, anxiously awaiting its release, were forced to sustain themselves on the two songs, "All Fires" and "City Calls," from on the group's MySpace site. Fortunately, Beast Moans should thoroughly satisfy these malnourished fans. As a group, Swan Lake writes songs that have more cacophony and less form than what any of the three writers produced individually: they have structure, but it's a structure based on how the layers define it instead of how the structure defines the layers. In "A Venue Called Rubella," for example, keys and guitars play their own rhythms with little regard for what the others are doing while the singers' indie-English-accented voices spout vaguely postmodern and often undecipherable lyrics. Esotericism seems to be an intended goal ("I called your name in verse/To the masked poled opponents of partisans and sentiments and cake-holed second verse," Bejar sings in the new wavey "The Partisan But He's Got to Know"), and the listener's comprehension is not helped by the fact that the vocals are frequently mixed at such a low level that actual words are difficult to pick out. Still, amid the meandering melodies and distraught guitar lines there's something to grab onto, a warmth, a sense of purpose, like the Shins-esque (specifically "Caring Is Creepy") "Are You Swimming in Her Pools?" or the Western feel of "The Pollinated Girls" or the quiet melancholy of "All Fires," and the album comes together into something cohesive and enjoyable. With Beast Moans, Swan Lake has married the talent and off-kilter intelligence of all three of its members with something more abstract, more visceral, something that sets it apart from all of their individual work, and gives the indie rock world another reason to fawn over Canada.

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