I’ve fallen out with BBC 6 Music in the morning. It’s all gone a bit too Radio 1 for me; no Lauren Laverne + 1 very sterile playlist x Nick “yawlraight?” Grimshaw ≠ a good start to the day. Since the turn of the year I’ve been using the daily commute to catch up with Guy Garvey’s Sunday afternoon show. Depending on the traffic and if I’m able to fast forward through days’-old news bulletins whilst driving, I can listen to the I’m Guy Garvey From Elbow Show in 8 or 9 chunks – almost a perfect week of soundtracked commuting. Guy Garvey From Elbow plays a decent mix of old and new, from the unheard and unknown to the overplayed and overblown, but there’s usually something every three or four records that really piques the interest – and that’s a high kite mark and very good personal ‘hit’ ratio by any show’s standards.
A couple of shows ago, Guy Garvey, the Elbow singer, played this. I was instantly grabbed.
Richard Swift – Looking Back I Should Have Been Home More
What a tune! From its opening clip-clopping barroom piano via its sunstroke cymbal splashes and Swift’s gear-shifting vocal in the chorus, right to the bit at the end when the wind instruments swirl and dance around the melody in a none-more-Beatles way and the backing singers go, “Woo-ah-ooh-ah-oo-oo!” until the fade out has been, gone and vanished, I knew this was a track that I’d be playing on repeat for the rest of the journey…and the rest of the next week, as it came to it.
Repeated immersion in the song revealed some lovely touches; little piano trills and triplets at the end of occasional lines…a horizontal drummer (very probably Swift himself) with exactly the right wee small hours feel… a drop out and a build up… a great chord change in the ‘hold on…’ section of the chorus…but most of all the greatest of all unravelling melodies, delivered in the basking warmth of the singer’s homely tone – breathy and reedy in the main but with requisite crack and crumble for the many sad parts (the title is the great giveaway here). It’s just about the greatest song I’ve heard this year, and it’s taken from an album that was released 20 years ago.
I don’t know how I missed out on Richard Swift until now. Looking Back… ambles along like some of those great Ed Harcourt / Cherry Ghost tracks from 20+ years ago, tracks I formed a mild obsession with at the time and I’m certain Guy Garvey From Elbow will have played Richard Swift in the past. I guess my antennae hadn’t been fully receptive until now. It turns out that (of course) Guy Garvey, the Voice of Elbow, is great friends with Richard Swift.
Or, rather, was friends with him.
In a sad twist of affairs, it turns out that back in 2018, Richard Swift was an alcoholic who very slowly and very methodically and, it seems, somewhat deliberately, drank himself to death.
A musicians’ musician, he was a touring member of The Shins and The Black Keys, a foil and touring support act for Jeff Tweedy and Wilco, someone equally at home blasting out southern-fried Strokes with the Kings Of Leon as he was when putting together his own bible belt southern soul gospel-tinged records. A studio obsessive since his early teens, he famously had a trailer in his back yard where he maintained a cluttered but inspirational studio that he modelled on the creative chaos of Lee Perry’s Black Ark space and called National Freedom. It was here that Swift summoned the magic that went into his songs and onto record. He’s got a whole catalogue out there, most of it conceived in National Freedom, and I’m looking forward to jumping in head (and ears) first. Better late than never.
Coincidentally, I saw David Hepworth on Instagram tonight talking about his record collection – “or rather an accumulation of records…records that followed me home over the years and got filed away,” and how he’d picked out a 45 year-old Brian Eno album that he’d never listened to until this week that he now can’t get enough of. “Don’t pursue the music,” he advised. “The music will find you at the time when you’re ready to hear it. Sometimes it can take 45 years…and that doesn’t matter.” Good advice, that. And spot on too. Guy Garvey From Elbow’s show on BBC 6 Music is proof of that.
Just search for The Guy Garvey From Elbow Show and you’ll find it all in one click.
You can find Richard Swift’s music on Bandcamp and Secretly Canadian.
Plain Or Pan 