In a heartbeat, I could have written many more lines about the gloriousness of Richard Swift’s Dressed Up For The Letdown, but we decided to let Cold War Kids Nathan Willett and Matt Maust lend their words. They were in the studio when Richard’s Daytrotter session was recorded in Austin and it was magical. Without further ado. – Sean Moeller

Richard Swift sounds like many things you have heard, from Harry Nillson to David Bowie. He does everything himself, from the tasteful production to the insanely stylish drumming. Every time we are on tour or in new cities talking about bands, we tell people about Dicky because we can’t believe that he isn’t already in everybody’s living room. We watched him record in Austin at the Daytrotter sessions playing two songs on piano and one on banjo. He did them each in one
take and the arrangements were fun, vibey tweaks from the recordings on the album. We were watching from the window in the control booth and trying to not make eye contact like the creepy obsessed fans that we are. It was the highlight of our SXSW. Swift rules. – Nathan Willett

The first time I ever heard Swift play live, I didn’t get to watch him, although he was about 10 feet away from me, overlooking Long Beach. Somehow we both were called into the Long Beach Art Museum by a mutual friend one night for a half party, half show, half social gathering in which he played an all-piano set as I was doing kind of a live mangling/application of
these big assemblage art pieces. I had only heard of him through friends back then, but the next morning I went to Aaron’s Records and I bought his double disc CD of his first two records. I’ve been hooked ever since, and the rare times in which I get to see him perform these days are few and far between. He’s all over the place, I don’t know how he does it. When that guy is around, all you want to do is ask him a thousand questions and then you don’t ask any because you just feel like the neighborhood kid bothering the professor on the weekend. I don’t think I laughed so hard on our last European trip as when he pulled out his Scottish accent one night in London in the dressing room. Getting that close to a true songwriter, let alone getting joke after joke I would think is a rare thing these days. So glad we got Swift and his artwork. – Matt Maust

(Quoted verbatim and completely unaltered from the one and only Richard Swift)
Five thinggz daddy likey aboutt sxsw
One — free birfday drinx
Two — paying xtra for kkrew
Three — seeing old friends getting drunk and arrested / uh oh
Four — making tables
Five — discovering “ponytail”

Richard Swift’s Official Site
Secretly Canadian