If you detect a sense of finality in Swoll’s latest single, there’s a good reason. “The lyrics for ‘The Wind At Night’ were the very last lyrics I wrote for the album,” says Matt Dowling, who composed and tracked the song at Alex Tebeleff’s Altadena, Calif., studio in November of last year. “A couple months later, the whole neighborhood burned down.”
Swoll began in 2018 as a collaboration between Dowling and Blight. Records’ Ben Schurr (Br’er, Luna Honey). The multi-textured, synth-heavy Swoll celebrated such obvious influences as Kraftwerk and Shudder To Think while sprinkling in elements of post-punk, new wave and trap (hip hop’s Southern-bred subgenre). Over the past seven years, Dowling’s Baltimore-based project has evolved from an in-house concern into an immersive multisensory live experience with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Erik Sleight and lighting designer Zak Forrest. A bicoastal affair, the new Avoid Attach (Blight.) was largely recorded by Schurr and Dan Angel in Philadelphia and mixed by Tebeleff in Southern California.
These days, Tebeleff and his young family are rebuilding their lives, and Dowling is left to ponder how “The Wind At Night” may have a deeper meaning.
“I’m wondering if some cosmic clairvoyant force was channeling through me,” he says. “Had I talked about the lyrics the day after I wrote them, I would’ve said something boring and generic like, ‘It’s a song about how life can change quickly, and you have to sort of embrace that and roll with it.’ Today, my answer is, ‘The song is about life’s Altadena events that hit us like a brick through the window—and how even when your world is turned upside down, those events make you, for better or for worse.’”
We’re proud to premiere Swoll’s “The Wind At Night.” Look for Avoid Attach September 26.
—Hobart Rowland
See Swoll live.
