New Music: The Black Swans: "Change" [MP3/Stream]by Stephen M. Deusner
The Black Swans' gentle folk-rock has always made a nice setting for Jerry DeCicca's deep, comfortably worn vocals, but it also hides dark, devious thoughts like those that clouded last year's Sex Brain EP. "Ain't got no tongue," goes the opening line on the title track from their forthcoming album, Change!, but the fact that DiCicca is singing it proves otherwise. So stay on your toes. Every second of these three and a half minutes sounds familiar but dangerously askew: the shimmery guitar solo that splits from the song hydra-like, Noel Sayre's gracefully arcing violin tracing a different tangent, the boop-boo-doops that must suffice for a coda. "Gonna find me an airplane/ Land in the clouds," DiCicca sings, no only ignoring the laws of physics but blurring the lines between irony and a sincere wish for escape-- in other words, a desire for real change.
