Seward

Seward’s third album ‘Second Two: Chapter Home’ and first for Naim Records is a stunning work of art. A record to get lost in. These are unconventional, original songs that ditch the tired verse-chorus-verse structure but trigger the same addiction cravings that the best pop music can. It’s the follow-up and third part of a trilogy of albums that began with 2011’s Home: Chapter One and continued with 2014’s Home Was a Chapter Twenty Six. Mixed and mastered by regular collaborator Matt Pence (Midlake, American Music Club, John Grant) at his Denton, Texas studio The Echo Lab, it’s their definitive album. Second Two: Chapter Home encompasses so much and demands to be heard in its entirety.

Hints of jazz, rumours of folk, Kosmische, post rock and touches of electronics. But combined in such a dazzling, inventive way: uncontrived, thrillingly alive. All is bound together by Adriano Galante’s soaring voice, an expressive instrument with singular phrasing which dances dexterously, changing style and delivery but always a deeply emotional presence.

Tracks like So Too Soon rise upwards to the light from aquatic depths, honeyed vocals lead us through distorted waves into a sudden surge of melodic beauty. Strings herald a heavy, distortion pedal guitar crunch before a dissonant collapse, drums falling inward and pianos jarring, before soaring back into the ragged glory of one of Seward’s most distinctive, original songs. 1° 1ª with its krautrock drums, and bass guitar rhythms, decorate poetic language and heavy indie guitar, the spooky, unmistakable tones of a Theremin in earshot. Epic in ambition and scale.

The band’s telepathic communication abounds on Second Two: Chapter Home. Each player with a vision that melts in perfect synchronicity. Each song is an atmosphere, dreamlike: a chapter, and the lyrics are closer to poetry than a run of the mill love song. Roles are adopted and identities assumed.

Seward call their music ‘free song’. It’s a new appellation for a new musical age, a determination to avoid using those same genre names that haven’t changed for decades. They’re a band borne from live performance. They thrive upon it. Their recordings always aim to capture the feeling of playing live and in STCH you can hear the room, the air. The sense of space; the tension and electricity.