Swan Lake

The mere announcement of Swan Lake's formation was enough to quicken the pulses of a certain breed of music fan, to whom Daniel Bejar (Destroyer/New Pornographers), Spencer Krug (Wolf Parade) and Carey Mercer (Frog Eyes) are major players and enigmatic alpha dogs. For people living in those circles, it's easy to forget that a pretty fair chunk of the listening public would look at that lineup and say "Uh, who?"

It's certainly possible that someone will pick up Beast Moans without being familiar with the day jobs of Bejar, Krug and Mercer. That listener may actually have an advantage, as Beast Moans is a consistently good record, an intermittently great record, but overall isn't on par with the top-shelf work of each member. The unfair kicker is that it's probably not necessarily supposed to be on par; it's essentially three friends playing with chemistry sets and being adventurous. Sometimes the collisions are too droning and/or ragtag ("City Calls"). Sometimes, though, they are sublime ("All Fires" and "The Freedom").

Not much is straightforward, and not many stories end where they begin. Finding a narrative arc would take a better sleuth than this reviewer, but Beast Moans is fairly unique in offering three distinct lenses to view the action. Those viewpoints aren't necessarily in competition, but it would be disingenuous to suggest that they all resonate equally. Swan Lake seem to generate the most heat when either Bejar or Krug takes a strong lead role.

Fear of static can make for some frustrating moments for the listener; Bejar begins "The Freedom" simply and powerfully, so it's jarring when an array of textures and wild effects begin to come out of the woodwork and eventually overpower the song altogether. That sort of seismic shift tends to work better given multiple chances to be heard properly. - Adam McKibbin, The Red Alert

Canada has certainly been the hot spot for indie bands in the new millennium, so the fact that the singers from three of the biggest (Dan Bejar from Destroyer, Spencer Krug from Wolf Parade, and Carey Mercer from Frog Eyes) came together in Swan Lake has been -- while perhaps not much of a surprise (the idea of a "collective" being quite a popular idea up north, coupled with the fact that the three have been working together in some form or another for the past few years) -- enough to thoroughly excite the hipsters, who, anxiously awaiting its release, were forced to sustain themselves on the two songs, "All Fires" and "City Calls," from on the group's MySpace site. Fortunately, Beast Moans should thoroughly satisfy these malnourished fans. As a group, Swan Lake writes songs that have more cacophony and less form than what any of the three writers produced individually: they have structure, but it's a structure based on how the layers define it instead of how the structure defines the layers. In "A Venue Called Rubella," for example, keys and guitars play their own rhythms with little regard for what the others are doing while the singers' indie-English-accented voices spout vaguely postmodern and often undecipherable lyrics. Esotericism seems to be an intended goal ("I called your name in verse/To the masked poled opponents of partisans and sentiments and cake-holed second verse," Bejar sings in the new wavey "The Partisan But He's Got to Know"), and the listener's comprehension is not helped by the fact that the vocals are frequently mixed at such a low level that actual words are difficult to pick out. Still, amid the meandering melodies and distraught guitar lines there's something to grab onto, a warmth, a sense of purpose, like the Shins-esque (specifically "Caring Is Creepy") "Are You Swimming in Her Pools?" or the Western feel of "The Pollinated Girls" or the quiet melancholy of "All Fires," and the album comes together into something cohesive and enjoyable. With Beast Moans, Swan Lake has married the talent and off-kilter intelligence of all three of its members with something more abstract, more visceral, something that sets it apart from all of their individual work, and gives the indie rock world another reason to fawn over Canada. ~ Marisa Brown, All Music Guide