Jack Colwell: Swandream | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- Australia’s music industry does have its “issues” - the preponderance of cisgender, heteronormative, white male voices that, at times, effectively drown out anything that is not. Elsewhere there is a wider market for difference in content, particularly in the United Kingdom and Europe where differing styles of musical development are actively encouraged and celebrated. Australia’s homogeneity is a product of our development as an outpost of an Empire that has long since decayed and vanished, and the change is coming – slowly, but it is happening. The change that is needed to create a more vibrant musical world in Australia will be instituted by the plethora of young artists who have come of age in the this century and reject the old standards of gender, sexuality and ethnic patterns of behaviour.

One of those young artists is Sydney born, raised, and residing Jack Colwell. Colwell is unashamedly open about his sexuality as a proud gay man who has lived a life of bullying, questioning his identity, personal heartbreak, and historical abuse. These marks of growing up have been turned into songs of great beauty, introspection and a welcome release of the pain that caused them. These tropes are not often explored, nor welcomed, in that old-style Australian music business, particularly from a male point-of-view. Also not often heard is the male performer working under the direction of a female producer, even one as talented and respected as Sarah Blasko. Colwell as said that he felt a greater affinity for developing these songs in the studio with Blasko than he has in the past working with a male producer.

Blasko’s own work is like Colwell’s: creating a sophisticated world for her music to exist in and to explore emotions and thoughts across a variety of styles and interpretations. On Swandream Colwell has connected deeply with that world of colours and shadows, light and dark, heartbreak and hopefulness, pain and joy. The fourteen songs on his debut album are not all the same style, the songs dictate that the performer needs to create a sonic storybook where each chapter is differing in tone and style to the previous and the next. Colwell puts in a performance reminiscent of some of his musical mentors – Blasko, naturally, Kate Bush, P.J. Harvey and most strongly, Tori Amos. Colwell’s Sydney Conservatorium training might have been ultimately stifling (as it was with Amos’s formal study prior to her breakout Little Earthquakes album) yet his use of the piano as his main instrument is at times tender, other times bellicose with a heavy use of the left hand (again similar to Amos in her Boys For Pele period in the '90s).

Colwell’s voice is harder to categorise, at times it is smoky and rough edged in a Tom Waits style (as on the outstanding Conversion Therapy), then tender and edged with a hopeful sadness like a younger Roy Orbison (Weak and Don’t Cry Those Tears) and even a throbbing growl and howling in the manner of Iggy Pop (PTSD) – which is a massive counterpoint to the clear voiced, mid-tempo, ballad In My Dreams and the anthemic No Mercy. There is no finer example of how Colwell can cover so many bases by going from a revivalist style hymn of protest I Will Not Change My Ways with Owen Pallett (of Arcade Fire) to the album’s centrepiece and most beautiful tune, The Sound of Music which juxtaposes the schmaltz of that film and gentle waltz-time of the song with lyrics about the domestic violence Colwell endured as a child. The album rounds out with a stylish lullaby A Spell with a mesmerizing vocal contribution from producer Blasko. 
They may be more beautiful and emotionally connective albums out this year, however, they would have to be created by some otherworldly level of artistry to match Swandream.

- Blair Martin. 
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1537198308/size=large/bgcol=f…; seamless><a href="http://jackcolwell.bandcamp.com/album/swandream">SWANDREAM by JACK COLWELL</a></iframe>