Richard Swift - The Novelist/walking Without Effort

Richard Swift’s dual debuts, The Novelist and Walking Without Effort, are fraternal twins wrestling with same Big Questions in opposite ways — one toiling in a cinderblock basement slugging typewriter coffee; one lost on the Pacific Coast Highway, looking again and again for something in a sunset that just ain’t there.

The Novelist, Swift's highly acclaimed, succinct, eight song, nineteen minute and thirty-eight second-long, audiophile archivist experiment immediately ushers the listener deep into the recesses of Swift's creative core for a kaleidoscopic trip aboard an intergalactic vaudevillian steamship with a speakeasy code-word. Yet, The Novelist is only one small manifestation of Swift's entire musical manifesto and only one-half of this double-disc set.

A slight step eastward from the eclectic musings of The Novelist, Walking Without Effort intentionally paints another image, and baptizes believers born-again into Swift's unique brand of sonic schizophrenia. Gramophones are replaced by 8-tracks and Persian rugs are covered with shag as Swift nods to the early 70's solo efforts of McCartney and Harrison, while waving to Burt Bacharach and Van Dyke Parks.