Thank God For Sin To Show The Way

Forget About Jesus (Exhumed Vocals): Swell (1994)

 

I rediscovered Forget About Jesus by Swell during my (very) slow attempt to transfer my shiny discs to digital files and gradually whittle down my physical collection of CDs. This began when we moved house over a decade ago and I swore that, come the next house move, we'd never have to shift that number of boxes again. We're contemplating a move in the next year or so and I've made very little headway in the intervening years.

 

This four-track CD from 1994 was in a box of singles, my sole purchase of Swell's music in nearly three decades. I remember hearing Forget About Jesus on the radio; I'm guessing it would have been the Mark Radcliffe evening show on Radio 1 as Swell recorded a session including this song the same year. What I do remember is that hearing the song was just like that scene in High Fidelity when John Cusack drops The Beta Band's Dry The Rain - I stopped what I was doing and just listened to it all the way through and hastily scribbled down the name of the song and the band at the end. 

 

I bought the single on CD from Replay Records in Bristol soon after. Forget About Jesus features twice: firstly, an "exhumed vocals" version, which in retrospect seems to be a slight edit of the album version; the final track, Forget About Dean, features drummer Sean Kirkpatrick's dad Dean reciting the lyrics over an altered, extended arrangement. 

Forget About Dean: Swell (1994)

The newly digitised single popped up on my playlist yesterday on my commute home from work. I was blown away by the song all over again and ended up playing it eight times, nearly-but-not-quite in a continuous loop. To my ears, it's acoustic and twangy guitars, shuffling drums, sweeping synths and vocals bordering on sing-speak in perfect unison.

There she stands
There she sits
Water, life, and grace ...in their hands
Who you gonna' listen to if it's only just a smile?
Thank god for sin to show the way

 

Where she lies,
Where she waits.
There's an act of grace... in their eyes
Who you going to listen to if it's only just a smile?
Thank god for sin to show the way

 

Stay a little lonely this time,
Stay a little longer this time

 

Despite all this, I failed to follow up by buying third album 41 or indeed anything else by Swell that came before or after. In researching today's post, I found that Swell's founding member and driving force, David Freel, sadly passed on 12th April this year. 

 

Oregon, where David Freel settled with his family and continued to create music for the last decade and a half of his life, is home to pSychoSpecificMusic. On their Bandcamp page you can buy Freel's back catalogue of Swell albums, singles and rarities, together with his numerous other projects. 

Twenty eight years after its original release, I belatedly listened to 41 in full. The Bandcamp release from 2014 is retitled (41 is 20) and contains a bonus track, "lyrics". As with Forget About Dean, it features Dean Fitzpatrick sat on the train, reciting the album's lyrics. Start to finish, 41 is a rather wonderful record and the start of my journey of (re)discovery with Swell and David Freel. Sorry that I left it so long / too late. I’ll stay a little longer this time…