The Newest Noise for Your Listening Pleasure! | By Nicholas Senior
Black Swift
Stuttgart, Germany
Desert Rain | May 17 | Self-Released
RIYL: Arid isolation. Lush encouragement. Spaghetti Westerns.
Black SwiftPick up Desert Rain HERE!
Desert Rain is the soundtrack to the feeling you get when life is at its most desperate, when it’s been six days without water, body full of wind and sunburns, and the verdant, moisture-rich valley below is just within sight. Black Swift play songs steeped in everlasting loneliness and unyielding hope. The music is the perfect counterpart to these themes, a post-punk-ified, Western-tinged, desert rock—which is to say that Black Swift hit a nerve that exists in all of us, even if some of us haven’t seen “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.” This push and pull between despair and optimism is masterfully tugged by the German-by-way-of-the-American-Midwest vocalist, guitarist, and lap steel player Sally Grayson. As she eloquently notes, “I want people to know that when they are in that dark place, they are not alone, and that they have the strength inside of themselves to keep moving on and to carry on.” If ever a band could pull off this silver lining, it’s Black Swift. Whether winners or losers—or both, aren’t we all?—Desert Rain has something for everyone.
