Ground Trouble Jaw

We Say...

Review by Yancey Strickler

We've been waiting years for Richard Swift to break out. Even though his recordings have largely left me cold, his persistence, ambition and talent, clear even through my cynical lens, lead me to believe that he could not fail. And well, he hasn't failed exactly, but Swift hasn't exactly caught on either. In another life, Swift made pretty much only Christian music (he spent time with the Promise Keepers, Starflyer 59 and recording as Dicky Ochoa), but the recordings under his own name have been mainstream indie singer-songwriter, not all that far from Sufjan and the like, with a prepared audience that hasn't managed to uncover him. Yet.

Ground Trouble Jaw is different. Very different. Out of nowhere, Swift is now Bobby Darin doing a Freak Out-era Frank Zappa impression (or vice versa), an odd and earnest midpoint between straight girl-group balladry and '70s blue-eyed soul. Thing of it is, Swift is so skilled as a songwriter and listener that none of it sounds like camp: "Would You?" and "Lady Luck," the first two songs here, are knock-you-off-your-feet good. Tender and beautiful, they're the kind of love songs that have always existed somewhere, in someone's heart. It took a man like Richard Swift to finally extricate them from the ether, liberate them for us to finally get here.

Of the two, we'll go with "Would You?" as our favorite — love the quick guitar strums and his voice, just aching and breaking for love — but "Lady Luck" is close behind. They're two of the best songs I can remember coming across in all of 2008 — and the fact that they sound like they're from 1958 is all the better. They are incredible and they are immediate, and in their combined seven minutes, all that we love about music comes out.