SPARROWS SWARM AND SING "O'Shenandoah..." CD

Magic Bullet continually pushes the envelope by signing some of the most interesting, talented, and unique bands. This record has to be played continually for about 3 times in order to get a real picture of what they are trying to accomplish. In some weird places bands like Wilco, Godspeed You Black Emperor, and Isis can meet and play music together is the birthplace of Sparrows Swarm And Sing. Epic, disturbing, dark and at times melodic. The packaging is top notch and really lends to the band's air of mystery. From the looks of it, I can easily see a Kayo Dot and Sparrows Swarm And Sing tour. It's really that out there.

- Ray Harkins

Sparrows Swarm and Sing
"..O Shenandoah Mighty Death Will Find Me" (CD)

released in 2006
Label: Magic Bullet
http://www.swarmandsing.com/

Sparrows Swarm and Sing bring us ..O Shenandoah Might Death Will Find Me, four epic instrumental songs, the shortest being over 15 minutes, the longest a touch over 25 minutes. What story they..re exactly trying to tell is as good as anyone..s guess. Here..s a possible version of what this album brings to mind:

Walking in a mountain valley, cross big gushing river. Now you..re lost inside a dark, scary forest. Woops, wrong turn; cult ritual in progress. After hanging out with lunatics, journey commences. Enter a tribal village, festivities in progress. Continue journey into nightmarish underground goblin dwelling. The adventure ends in some such epic fashion of struggle for survival and question of faith, and the day beings anew.

Not a particularly interesting story, but with a little imagination it becomes manageable. There..s a lack of clear theme and direction. In the opening track they nail the mountain scene, and give you a whole nine minutes of intro just to make sure you..re not lost. The album continues in tedious fashion, varying from moments of greatness to moments of flatness.

SSS are reminiscent of many current experimental, post-rockers (Explosions in the Sky comes to mind). They layer on and build, using orchestral percussion, strings and horns along with guitars. It sounds like rock music trying to be like classical music, and at times it works. ..Father Death/Mother Nature, Pt.1.. sounds like a ballet movement possessed. Some of the best parts are in the aptly titled ..Across Canyons/Canyon,.. slowly building ominous and moving parts into big large chords just to die away again. ..Warm Blood Within, Pt.2.. is overall the strongest and most rocking piece, if you manage to pay attention that long into the album.

By the end, you..ll still be unsure of what story SSS were trying to get across. This is a good effort put forth, and with a little more development and a little cutting back on the long tracks, they might have something. For now, this could make a nice soundtrack to a fantasy novel, or to your next outdoor hiking trip. Also suitable as RPG background music.

5.5/10

Review written on 2006/10/02 by Mark Shvartsman

Sparrows Swarm & Sing
..O Shenandoah Mighty Death Will Find Me
(Magic Bullet)

With an album title like that, it..s easy to call Sparrows hokey or pretentious .. and at times they are. Imagine the post-rock of Explosions in the Sky or Mogwai, couched in Tom Waits-y multi-instrumentalism. From that strange synthesis grows a tension between rock and symphony that never quite gets resolved by the end of this 4-track, 79-minute epic. At their worst, the songs ramble for way too long. Still, the album is rife with dazzling sonics. ..Warm Blood Within,.. the first track to cohere in the symphonic sense, is breathtaking, revelatory. .. Dan Barry

Sparrows Swarm and Sing, "O' Shenandoah, Mighty Death Will Find Me"
Written by Duncan Edwards
Sunday, 24 September 2006

This worthy attempt links traditional song, pantheism, and post-rock. Sparrows Swarm and Sing create vaguely apocalyptic beauty that is sequentially paced, at times cinematic, and ultimately life-affirming. They do sing, vocalize, and yell, with mixed results.

Magic Bullet

From the instrumentation (glockenspiel, cello, guitar, pianorgan, violin, drums, bass guitar) the band name, and the record title, it can be surmised that the shallow graves of brevity and song structure are about to be danced upon. "Across Canyons/Canyons" begins well with twittering birds and a faint lonely guitar and swells into an extended piece of sublimely simple Rodanesque melancholy. Reaching a crescendo around the 11 minute mark it then lulls and peaks pleasantly for another quarter of an hour or so.

My preferred sequential pacing and vaguely apocalyptic beauty is purely instrumental or only lightly sprinkled with spoken word. Upsetting then, that "Father Death / Mother Nature (PART 1)" includes vocalizing and, possibly, the jauntiest irksome yelling since The Past segment of Sudden Sway's incredible Spacemate depicted the uncorrupted exuberance of a band in pre-product mode. Naturally, a mental Cease and Desist memo was hastily constructed: You arent a mini-skirted chanteuse, a goose-bump inspiring choir of Bulgarian women in national costume, or Marc Bolan, please stop spoiling things with your wordless voices. Then, gazing at Jason Fiskes artworkwith anonymous pioneer, praying figure bereft of flesh, the lifeforce streaming out of a deer's eyes, and the moonthe realization dawned that Sparrows Swarm and Sing are uncorrupted exuberance in pre-product mode. Let them be. What's more, in performance the contrast probably works just fine. Either way, the initial guitar backdrop, the second sectionstrongly evocative of the epic yet understated qualities of Brokebackand the final one which fragments nicely into a free-folk-out-jazz freak-out, are worth the trip.

"Warm Blood Within (PART 2)" begins on what might be more like Michael Nyman's idea of a dynamic riff than Mogwai's, and slips into unsatisfying vocalizing for a while. Thankfully, Sparrows Swarm and Sing then have the good sense to pulverize all this with splendid cacophony and a long aching section of stately cello, violin and piano. Once again, all is forgiven.

The final piece, "O Shenandoah," borrows a refrain, for the origins of which I quote Barry Finn (www.mudcat.org): "It's been collected by Lomax, Sandburg, Hugill, Whall, Bullen, Colcord, Doerflinger, Abrahams, Shay, Bone, etc. It's been found aboard ships as The Wide Missouri, The Wild Mizzourye, The World Of Misery-Solid Fas (West Indies, rowing shanty, although collected recently by Abrahams, it may be as old as most other versions), Shenandoah (& it's many spellings), The Oceanida, Rolling River. It's been claimed as a river song a sea shanty, a US Army song & by the cavalry & wagon soldiers, a song of the Canadian & American mountain men, traders, voyagers & trappers. It's been the name of a few shanties, The Gals Of Dublin Town or The Harp Without The Crown or The Shenandoah, also The Saucy Arabella or The Davy Crockett or The Shenandoah. It's been used on board with the windlass, capstan, & winches for loading cargo. In the West Indian version, it was used at the oars while chasing the whale (Blackfish)."

All that ubiquity before Hollywood or Ken Burns got at it. Apparently, even Hyacinth Bucket, the overbearing heroine of the BBC comedy Keeping Up Appearances sang a line or two to impress a retired admiral in one episode. My favorite version refers to the courtship of a white trader and a daughter of the Indian chief, Skenandoah, an Iroquois. They happily ran away together but were caught, with consequences more severe than those suffered by Abelard and Heloise.

Somehow, Sparrows Swarm and Sing do "O Shenandoah" without sounding like an embarrassing 21st century campfire sing-along. Lyrically they shift back and forth from the river as metaphor to the chief's daughter for a few minutes beforewhat sounds likebombs falling in the night and an eerie super-amplified wine glass announce the return of vaguely apocalyptic beauty! More tempered vocals appear before we are treated to a great quivering otherworldly ending entirely befitting The Daughter of the Stars, and which could almost come from the work of György Sándor Ligeti.

If Sparrows Swarm and Sing ever want to sing, possibly, the filthiest version, from Randolph/ Legman's 'Roll Me in Your Arms' .. 94, "The Wide Missouri" rare traditional text:

"Oh Shen a do ra I love your daughter
Away! you mighty river!
I love the hole where she makes water,
AWAY, we're gone away!
Across the wide Missouri."

SPARROWS SWARM AND SING

Author(s): LINDA LABAN Date: August 25, 2006 Page: D15 Section: Arts

(Magic Bullet) Sparrows Swarm and Sing's imposingly titled debut CD comprises just four songs: four mighty songs that amount to more than 79 minutes of highly dramatic, marvelously experimental, incredibly crafted, and emotionally engulfing music. Yes, indeed, another great post-rock band is born. This Massachusetts sextet eschews the banal new world of short attention spans and opens with the 24-minute instrumental, "Across Canyons/Canons." This thrill-ride builds from lilting and spare acoustic (then slide) guitars to doleful strings, then to a thrashing cathartic clash of guitars and drums. Just as meticulously, "Father Death/Mother Nature" is woven from jangly guitar and a dark, Slavic-flavored, cello-etched stomp. Then a swaggering male choir strikes up with a catchy biblical refrain: "Gonna walk, gonna walk through the valley of life, oh death, oh death . . ." At which point, the song is just getting underway. The flighty and tightly wound "Warm Blood Within" follows, before the deal-clinching album closer, "O'Shenandoah," begins with a softly sung Southern hymn and peaks with delicious, trilling guitars. Brilliant post-rock action. Sparrows Swarm and Sing performs at the Lily Pad tomorrow night.

ESSENTIAL TRACK: "Father Death/Mother Nature"

(by Jonathan Ruchti):

Sparrows Swarm and Sing
O Shenandoah, Mighty Death Will Find Me

If words are loaded pistols like Sarte suggested, then what is music? Often considered something beyond language, it is in its most basic form a collection of vibrations that we each swallow and ingest through our ears and experience as individuals in a completely unique fashion. That being said, an objective music review is impossible. Its like attempting to explain water to something that has never tasted it. Well, its wet, (so are my girlfriends pants) and refreshing (as is getting in my girlfriends pants) and you need it to survive (yeah you get the idea). Bottom line: welcome to a subjective review.

Best known to critics for their epic orchestrated instrumentation eerily akin to GYBE, Sparrows Swarm Sing and their Magic Bullet debut O Shenandoah, Mighty Death Will Find Me exhibits a clear evolution in musical expression while not completely losing their benchmark sound. Like new tentacles on the same old body, the album maintains clear origins, but is now reaching out into new depths, utilizing a broad array of elements including folkie acoustic passages and vocal melodies, sparse clink/clatter, and some paralyzing walls of sound that while stray from the traditional post-rock format, still challenge the listener with perplexing intensity.

The disc opens with Across Canyons/canons, a somber 25 minute encounter that in reality needs no further explanation than a re-read of the song title. This track weaves an impassioned journey across gentle rolling hills that unfold like an invitation at your feet and bottomless valleys that wisp to life beneath you, tickling your toes like unknown gravities. There are no mathematical patterns buried here, and the climactic build ups tend to operate on calm water and rising tides, unlike the choppy, chaotic bursts of post-rock forefathers Mogwai.

Father Death / Mother Nature and its two succeeding tracks is where the divergence from the prior EPs takes place. Complex songs built on minimalist and sparse foundations, including the clatter of pots and pans paralleling the sound of in-laws Set Fire to Flames somehow manage to rattle and subdue the listener at the same time. The last three tracks, being the bulk of the album, feature ASMZ inspired vocal melodies that build, build, and then break into a mass array of volume that conjures images of a musical orgy surrounding a campfire. Once you get past the visual metaphor of loin-clothed, long-bearded, Neanderthal men running around tapping the triangle, its actually quite an amazing sensation.

The brutish analogy above is not meant in negative light whatsoever. These are homegrown, almost tribal songs rooted deep in the soil. Whereas Explosions in the Sky and Mono give you a dizzy, head in the clouds sensation, SSAS will gently tug at your inhibitions and bring you down gently to the ground where youll find yourself mindlessly kissing the dirt. Theres that *something* to this sound that is so completely organic in nature that it feels as if it has stemmed from a seed buried eons ago in the belly of the earth.

The Sarte quote used to introduce this review was meant to elucidate the individualistic nature of music and specifically this release. I asked numerous others to describe the album in a single word and received responses from disappointing to heroic. Quite simply, O Shenandoah is the soundtrack to Existentialism. It is something that cannot be defined except by you, the listener experiencing the reverberations, and refuses to subject itself to the rules of collective will. The personal experience I felt while under the spell of these four tracksone of reposeful, placid waves wrapping gently around me like a cocoon, before subtly pulling me underneath the water again as the fuzz of a broken tremolo sinks to the ocean flooris one you very well may not have.

Regardless, the bottom line remains that while SSAS continues to grow and evolve, they remain extremely comfortable and honest with their music. This is something that cannot be said about many bands that have crow-barred their way into the genre of instrumental rock. Whether or not this album flies through one ear and out the other, or sinks in through your pores and clogs your veins with pleasure, it is imperative to retain the memory of the personality behind this release. In response to another pretentious philosopher who said, Without music life would be a mistake I can only offer the statement that without bands like this, post-rock would be dead.

8/3/06

Last night in Portland, Oregon, SPARROWS SWARM AND SING had their trailer broken into, resulting in thousands of dollars of vintage/irreplaceable stolen equipment.

There is still a month left on the band's summer tour of the United States. Being down two drum kits and two amp heads presents an obviously daunting challenge in terms of being able to finish, especially 3000 miles from home.

In the event that you are reading this and wish to donate money into the band's Paypal account for the procurement of replacement equipment, you can do so via the following means:

* Paypal address = GENMALL7@gmail.com
* Subject line = "Sparrows Donation"
* Be sure to include your mailing address, as Magic Bullet will be sending out various art pieces/thank you notes to all contributors.

We appreciate any and all efforts to help the band get back on their feet.

--

For those in the Portland area, here is a complete list of what was stolen. If you come across any of these items, please contact us immediately at brent@magicbulletrecords.com or sparrows.swarmandsing@gmail.com.

1. vintage ampeg v-2
2. marshall 1980's jcm 8000 2205 (lead series) 2 - channel
3. Meinl Hi hats 14' inches
4. Meinl Ride Cymbal - 21 inches
5. Custom Projection Ride - 20 inches
6. Cymbal Case - Square
7. Hardware Case - Black bag
8. Tama Snare Stand
9. DW Snare Stand
10. Tama Hi-hat Stand
11. Tama Cymbal Stand
12. Yamaha Cymbal Stand
13. Floor tom Hardware ($50)
14. Bass drum Hardware ($75)
15. Roc n Soc Drum Throne
16. Ayotte Floor tom legs
17. DW Bass Drum Beater
18. Pearl Boom Cymbal Stand
19. Yamaha Hi hat stand
20. Two (2) tama cymbal stands
21. 2 guitar stands
22. Iron Cobra Bass pedal
23. Pork pie stool

--

The rest of the band's tour dates can be found at:

http://www.myspace.com/swarmandsing

Thank you.

At long last, "O'Shenandoah, Mighty Death Will Find Me," the Magic Bullet full length debut from Boston's SPARROWS SWARM AND SING, is in North American stores today. The 4-song, 79 minute disc has already been heavily embraced by independent music fans everywhere, having sold out of the first pressing two weeks before the release date even hit.

Copies can be found in your favorite local music store.

For online ordering, please be sure to get your copies via our friends at Insound (link), who are selling the CD for a special $9.99 rate. YOU CAN GET AN ADDITIONAL 15% OFF by using coupon code: SparrowsInsound at checkout!

To preview tracks from the album:

* Decoy Music (streaming the ENTIRE "Across Canyons/Canons" track)
* Magic Bullet on MySpace
* Sparrows Swarm And Sing on MySpace

- UK/European release date is August 29, 2006.
- Band is wrapping up final leg of United States tour (see MBR site or MySpace for dates)
- "O'Shenandoah..." vinyl series and DVD projects to be released this fall/winter

Thank you.

...from www.magicbulletrecords.com...

SPARROWS SWARM AND SING SONG TO BE FEATURED ON UPCOMING VICE CD/DVD SAMPLER

Vice Magazine subscribers will get a chance to hear a portion of SPARROWS SWARM AND SING's O'Shenandoah, Mighty Death Will Find Me album when they check their mailboxes this August. The band is featured on the exclusive CD/DVD that accompanies each issue sent to subscribers. For more information on Vice Magazine and to learn how to become a subscriber, visit their website.