Astrid Swan
Spartan picnic
Pyramid
Like a dizzying, drunken sprawl across the deck of a flailing sea vessel, "Spartan picnic" gives you little time to get your bearings before bombarding you with a varied range of genre choices and idiosyncratic deliveries. Astrid Swan seems just as comfortable in the 4/4, straight-forward chorus of the title track of her album as she does with the stuttering, shifting landscape of the rest of the song - and this extends throughout the record. "For those who drown" is a Billy Joel-esque anthem that was directed drastically off course, slipping through the electronica of the 80s and the kitsch of 70s rock ballads, and somehow coming out a winner... don't ask me how. The waltzing "Kinda joke" plays up the burlesque feel of "Spartan picnic", allying these theatrics with an almost "Sgt. Pepper's..." circus of oddities and the current trend towards quirky indie-rock. "What does the pink mean" has slowly become one of my favorite songs released this year: at first masquerading as a calmer, more accessible singer-songwriter's composition, but building itself up through so many torn shrouds of layered instrumentation that it becomes hard to call this track, or any of Astrid Swan's songs, a normal expedition. This album, rather obviously, is not going to be everyone's cup of tea. It is however, in this reviewer's humble opinion, a bizarre vehicle that is well worth its blessed confusion.
- Lars Garvey Laing-Peterson
