Jack Colwell Has Written The Fieriest And Most Beautiful Album Of The Year So Far
"As a young queer child I had these dreams of growing up and leaving the wicked town I lived in behind, and I imagined, like most I suppose, that I would reach a kind of utopia where I would be accepted, and loved, and feel free."
When Jack Colwell was four or five, his parents took him to a park in the Blue Mountains to feed the birds.
There’s still home video footage of that day — Colwell shakily handing bread to a gaggle of geese, which, as he notes today, he shouldn’t have been doing anyway. The geese weren’t into it. So they attacked him. “I was picked up in tears and taken away,” Colwell says now, decades after the fact.
In retrospect, the moment is pure Colwell — the beauty of the geese; the gradual, unavoidable terror of the scene; the nostalgia; the tears. These are the emotional textures that he has spent the last four years playing with, creating one of the most distinctive bodies of work in contemporary Australian music.
Most will know Colwell for his breakout single ‘Don’t Cry Those Tears.’ Drenched in Phil Spector-style ‘Wall of Sound’ production, slick with sweat and desire, it’s a Kenneth Anger short film translated into song and swaddled in velvet. “No one took me seriously before I released the song,” Colwell says now. “All it took was releasing this a few years back to have people sit up and take notice.”
‘Don’t Cry Those Tears’ is still with Colwell — still part of his legacy. It’s been re-recorded for his just-released debut album SWANDREAM, and it’s quieter now; less immediate. The chorus still builds to ecstasy, a delicious, textural moment of release, but it does so slowly, with one hand still firmly placed onto tragedy.
It was SWANDREAM’s producer, the musician Sarah Blasko, who convinced Colwell to re-record the song. “Sarah loved the track when she first heard it some years ago, and reached out to me asking if I was performing anywhere soon,” Colwell explains of their first meeting. “She attended my EP launch, which was put on as part of the Rolling Stone Live Lodge series, and then four weeks later, on my 27th birthday, I received an e-mail from her management inviting me to be her main support around Australia on her Eternal Return tour.”
The moment is pure Colwell — the beauty of the geese; the gradual, unavoidable terror of the scene; the nostalgia; the tears.
Blasko is a perfect fit for SWANDREAM — the two performers share obvious touchstones in the music of Kate Bush, and both have tender, rich voices. And that mutual understanding has translated into roomy, sensitive production: Blasko’s skill on the record is giving Colwell’s voice and words the space to breathe. You can hear every pant Colwell makes into the mic, meaning SWANDREAM‘s gentler moments feel alluring and silky, and the louder moments feel like Hell itself.
And it is a furious album, despite what you might expect from a title like SWANDREAM. ‘No Mercy’, one of the highlights of the entire record, was written during the plebiscite, and is shaped by that ugly time in Australian life. “Beauty and the pain have always danced on a tightrope in my writing,” Colwell explains. “One does not really exist without the other, almost like a classic Caravaggio painting.”
Which is surprising, given that Colwell self-identifies as conflict-averse. “As a person I would say I shy from violence. I am afraid of confrontation. During any verbal argument I freeze and am unable to speak. Songwriting is the only place where I have explored this anger. It actually struck me on a recent listen of the record, while I was approving the mastering just six weeks ago — how angry it was. And it was hard to hear that. To listen to your own upset, recorded forever. Yet, I acknowledge it’s truth.”
Perhaps the angriest song of them all is ‘PTSD’. Across shuddering guitars, his voice blistering, Colwell barks the title like he’s summoning something ancient. It is unlike anything he has ever recorded as a musician, filled with an intensity that feels Biblical.
“Too often we shy away from raw energy in life,” Colwell says as explanation for the track. “We turn our heads at mental illness, or uncomfortable situations, despite signalling online that we support those experiencing them. When it comes down to it, these situations are hard to deal with – and I’ve tried as best as I can to capture them sonically.”
Not, mind you, that the album is all pain and anger. The final track, ‘A Spell’, is a spider-web of a song, sliced in half by Blasko’s voice and rich with strangeness. It is the sound of a singer contorting themselves into new shapes; reflecting on all that pain and hurt, and then becoming something new and unique.
“Transformation has been a big theme in my life,” Colwell agrees. “I think it’s unavoidable if you’re queer. I’ve always been really fascinated by stories of change. The idea of Swan Lake, and the fantasy of transforming in private, in the shadows, was particularly relevant as I wrote this album. As a young queer child I had these dreams of growing up and leaving the wicked town I lived in behind, and I imagined, like most I suppose, that I would reach a kind of utopia where I would be accepted, and loved, and feel free.
“And to some extent, that did happen to me, but when I got there I realised there was a whole host of new problems and traumas that arose from the depths, or that had been submerged inside of me, waiting in this tar-like swamp inside my body, that would spill out during moments when I was less careful, less in control. The swan is grotesque, and you realise that once you reach the SWANDREAM, that the journey is longer – and to some extent eternal.”
“As a young queer child I had these dreams of growing up and leaving the wicked town I lived in behind…”
It’s Colwell’s honesty that allows him to tell such stories. Some musicians will drop a lie to get an easy rhyme, or some note of catharsis that isn’t really there. But Colwell never does. His music lays itself bare. It tells you everything that it needs you to know, almost immediately, and then it lets you decide what you want to do next.
“The music industry tends to romanticise young artists, fully formed in their teens and putting out their best bodies of work in their early 20s,” Colwell says. “But I think the reality for most is that these skills are honed over years, behind closed doors, in-between personal moments.
“I talk about Tori Amos a lot, because it’s true that Tori was 28 when Little Earthquakes came out, and the industry said she was too old, and that pianos were done. She was done. But she proved them wrong.”
Jack Colwell’s debut album SWANDREAM is out now.
Joseph Earp is a staff writer at Music Junkee. He tweets @Joseph_O_Earp.
Photo Credit: Kylie Coutts