A Christmas wish list from us to Santa Claus would be brief and bulleted by just one plea to the big hairy guy in velvet: May you deliver into Richard Swift’s stocking the most potent healing powers so that his sprained wrist can heal in medically absurd time. That’s it. It’s all we should all want out of that big red sack or from the grand wizard of Oz, whomever is processing these queries. We’d be willing to take better care of the elderly and to hold more doors open than one person physically can in a day – every day. You tell us what we need to do and…done. It will be done. You see, Richard Swift is no ordinary man. He’s not someone we can afford to have sprain anything. Because of this accident, he was forced to cancel a run of live dates with the Cold War Kids. That’s cruel. There are rumors that the guy could be working with Mark Ronson and The Dap-Kings on his next album, the follow-up to one of the year’s best, Dressed Up For The Letdown. If that doesn’t make your chops just drool with slobber and get your perspiring in the pits and across the forehead, then my friend, you’ve got no glands or pores. May the blessed Santa Claus give Richard Swift the power and dexterity he needs to get back to work on what likely will be another masterpiece. To top it off, just a few weeks into the new year of 2008, Swift will release a record of instrumental music under the name Instruments of Science & Technology (not to be confused with Spiral Stairs’ sorta defunct Preston School of Industry). Oftentimes, music critics will suggest the perfect activities that should be done while listening to a particular album – be it smoking weed, washing the dishes, banging a waitress, punching a wall. We’re not going to do that, but will simply say that it at times feels like you’re navigating a heating duct trying to quietly escape from some gun-wielding nutcase who’s intent on killing you, listening to a bug zapper sizzling flying cotton balls as if were calming seas crashing into a beach and as Daft Punk forgetting that they aren’t Sigur Ros. Now you figure out what you could be doing with all of that happening. A great way to meet Swift is to peep out the session he did with us down in Austin last March, during the SXSW festival. It was recorded one day after his birthday and the crowded house of Cold War Kids, Sound Team, and Voxtrot members were rapt as they listened to the shaved down versions of songs that will work on us emotionally forever. Promise.

Richard Swift: Daytrotter Session Songs

Richard Swift: Daytrotter Session Article

Secretly Canadian Records