Swim Good :: "Grand Beach" [feat. S. Carey and Daniela Andrade]

A whirring and plaintive hook sits at the middle of Jon Lawless' most recent work as Swim Good, "Grand Beach". Featuring guest turns from S. Carey, of Bon Iver fame, and Daniela Andrade, Lawless isn't interested in heading for the dance floor, instead taking the listener to the backyard under a constellation of synths and echoing vocals. The central question, "Would you swim far if you had the right lung?", represents an oblique interrogative, something stuck between the self and the other, a Kate Chopin-level question about how far any of us is willing to go when caught in a bind.

Swim Good :: "Sandviken"

Behind the breezy melody of Swim Good's "Sandviken" you might find the stakes are high. A 90s club-keyboard progression (which bears some resemblance to the one on "Act More Stupidly") and a kick-drum downbeat belie the hints of claustrophobia - "the hole in the wall is where I left you" - and the restless identity politics, "I'm not the same me". By the time the clap track hits in the second half, the ebullience inveighs against the darkness, a head-nodding three act play that ends with the edict, "I will never put my hope in any other". According to Swim Good mastermind Jon Lawless, these compositions are limited to one day to write, which explains a bit why he might not need to rely on anyone else when he not spending his days in the beautiful Democratic Republic of his other main avocation, First Rate People. "Sandviken" is the third in a string of excellent recent singles from Swim Good, a testament to these highs and lows, a journey into the darkness of the self.

Swim Good :: "Lobby" [Feat. Go Dreamer]

The latest from Swim Good is a buzzing slow-jam collaboration, "Lobby" with Atlanta production wizard Go Dreamer. "Lobby" tweaks and nods through its opening section, lyrical nods to overdosing, the Meatpacking District and the most dedicated meditation on the role of hotels in the nocturnal social scene since R. Kelly's "Ignition [Remix]". The second movement, just over two minutes in, essentializes and refines the idea, Swim Good pulling out just four notes around which to build a languid and pretty conclusion. It's the slow-dance that comes after the slow-dance that ended the party.

Swim Good :: "Act More Stupidly"

Swim Good returns with another cruel summer single, "Act More Stupidly", a bit of meditative electronic pop.With a synthesizer-horn line that seemingly slips out the side of the mouth, its mournful layers commit themselves to building something elegiac. Maybe there are no victories in a world where the best you can do is sing, "Something's gonna come/you're young". The final movement, a soaring and wordless vocal, trapped at the top of the room finishes the argument: Pensiveness is out, "Act More Stupidly", even when it sounds this good.

Swim Good :: "Summer Solstice"

Jon Lawless returns for the second-single, "Summer Solstice" as Swim Good - the previous effort "Totally A Mess Wild" has functionally disappeared from the Internet. "Summer Solstice" is a snapping synthesizer jam, an upbeat UB40 keyboard riff mixing with a whirring drum loop. With the addition of yelps and the synth horns that showed up all over the First Rate People demos back in 2009, Lawless has here built something entirely ebullient. Lyrically referencing a year-later-on "Solstice", Lawless drawls, "I think I used to play favorites back in 2010/I think I used to play favorites and now I'm doing it again." While absolute clarity is absent in a statement like this, it is the gift of the singer to make it feel relevant anyway, a singable hook about not growing out of old habits. Soon enough, played favorites or not, "Summer Solstice", like the ever collapsing days it describes, evaporates into well-remembered nostalgia.

Top 50 Songs of 2012 :: [50-41]

Welcome to our annual countdown of the 50 best songs of the calendar year. Songs must be from an EP, LP or demo released during 2012 and no band may appear twice. Today, we count down 50 to 41.


50. Swim Good - "Totally A Mess Wild"



A spiraling and looping beat, this First Rate People offshoot delivered a song about being out of control that was tautly and intentionally organized. The initial duet was the charmer, playful and biting in the asking of questions like, "Are you ashamed of the things that you do?"


49. Little Legend - "Saints"



This group of Wisconsinites brought the house when it came to blue-collar rock in 2012. "Saints" proved to be nothing like its title, lines about being born under bad signs and with fires lodged firmly in the skull. It was all whiskey and cigarettes, full of small sins and resolute sinners


48. Teleman - "Cristina"



Bits of Phoenix crept into the corners of Teleman's debut Moshi Moshi single, "Cristina". The cruise-control set at something closer to residential speed limits, "Cristina" glides around under its own power: glossy, love-sick and circular.


47. Long Walks On The Beach - "We're Growing Up"



Long Walks On The Beach made lo-fi sound high on the vaguely seasick "We're Growing Up." Frantic and breathless, the band grappled with the developmental process in a string-soaked universe where "crowds swell" without urging and people "hang tough" in the tape fuzz.


46. Mike O'Neil - "Henry"



Mike O'Neil built the most marketable chord progression of 2012 on "Henry;" it was a wonder it didn't find a multitude of advertising syncs. "Henry" wasn't intentionally commercial, but its breezy arrangement and lilting piano were made for the selling of consumer durables on your television.


45. farragoes - "The End of the Affair"

"The End of the Affair" was a summer single that name-checked Dostoevsky, snappy enough to sing along and dark enough to drive a listener to review their copy of Notes From Underground, somewhere gathering dust on a bookshelf. It was electro-pop with a cynical twist, sounds made for May and lyrics for the middle of a winter that never ever ends.


44. The Shins - "No Way Down"



In an election year, the Shins surprisingly shitty LP, Port of Morrow included one of the sharper, and least obvious political songs of the campaign. All about Mercer's weird liberal guilt and his effervescent liberal anger, it was at once a stab at elites, and a polemic spoken in their language. Beautiful and self-consciously hypocritical, "No Way Down" emerged as a song about "a tiny few having all of the fun," marketed in Starbucks outlets and served with five dollar coffees, a v-neck sweater song all about the 99%.


43. Warships - "Sleeper Hold"



Rooted in a lonely guitar lick, "Sleeper Hold" eventually gathered warmth before spilling over in one of the year's most affirming choruses. It wasn't all rainbows and lollipops, the lyrics were largely about sleeping alone, but the layered and soaring vocal of the refrain was enough to carry the light up out of the darkness.


42.Wildcat! Wildcat! - "Mr. Quiche"



Wildcat! Wildcat! will have a far bigger 2013 than anyone is ready for, a fact evinced by debut single, "Mr. Quiche." It sounded like the making of an indie rock slow-jam, lyrics about "lonely days" and a keyboard progression that practically exploded off the fingers. Two distinct movements, one sparse and the other lush, "Mr. Quiche" eventually erupted into falsetto final act before falling away to nothing.


41. Band of Horses - "Shut-In Tourist"



"Shut-In Tourist" exercised form and function in the same moment, the chorus' only and intensely memorable lyric was the repeated, "so I repeat what you said." The band sang the lyric four times in each refrain, the refrain repeated three times, and then a fourth for posterity only. That's 16 chances to sing "so I repeat what you said," which was, luckily, one of the better, if smaller, hooks of the year.

Swim Good :: "Totally A Mess Wild"

There is something charming about the grammatical incorrectness of Swim Good's single, "Totally A Mess Wild". Like it all spilled at once, an overflow of words divorced from construction, the title only forecasts the bright melody that barely fits in the context of the arrangement. In the first half, Jon Lawless and Anna Horvath of First Rate People fame, take one of the first hooks up a crystal staircase into series of immensely satisfying falsetto breaks. Horvath is again a revelation, providing the upper tier of the duet, a slice of crystalline purity soaring over the moving parts below her. This says nothing of the many other members of Swim Good who craft a brilliant cut of polyglot, genre-bended pop. The first hook is the repeating lyric, "nameless, nameless" and the second, the second half, is the eponymous title lyric, predictably bursting out the top of the room. The closest analog is some early Loney Dear work, this being just as delicate and more fun, but suffice it to say, no one else is making pop that sounds like this, a spilling overflow of so many melodies forged into one.