swan lake

A Week With Swan Lake's "Beast Moans": Day 3

18 November 2006
tell your friends... tell your friends...

Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Abigail Bruley
Fuck me, right? To hell with me for wanting more from this record. It’s been preoccupying my thoughts this week that it’s not healthy to have such high expectations of art, that you really need it to be grander than it naturally is. It’s like committing some minor treason (as George Bluth might coyly say). Let the songs be themselves. Want less. Or, want no more than is absolutely necessary for letdown is a four letter word. Expectations do typically tarnish what’s coming. Beast Moans, now a more familiar guest, is a victim of three persons thought of as existing in the valley made of gold that Mercer not so quaintly sings about in Caravan Breakers, where they automatically dump out pristine arrangements, cryptically insightful lyrics and the energy of 40 bobcats. Mercer, Krug and Bejar are considered a dream team and with that comes a degree of pressure that could make one nauseous. If it were any other three people, people we hadn’t heard of, we wouldn’t be having this discussion because the fawning over these songs would be too loud. It would drown out storm sirens and make all thunderclaps sound like two cotton balls colliding with each other. We’d hear something altogether different in these songs that are what they are—the extracurricular, spare time workings of three of the most gifted musical geniuses of the day. Yes, they’re that good, but together, these three men should be walking a yellow brick road that leads to that horse of a different color, the one that we look at and think reverently, “I never thought it could get better, but damn if it didn’t.” Going out on a limb, these songs were not pored over. They weren’t scratched out, reworked or scrutinized. There was a timeframe. They were quickies and under those circumstances, it makes you curious to know what a year could do for these guys. They could just live somewhere and work. Because why else but a lack of time would there be for not being as moved by these songs as the others that they’ve given us this year? It’s all about a clock.
Stay tuned tomorrow for a Spencer Krug love festival all the same.

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