SWALLOW
- Teach Your Bird To Sing (Flotation)
This is the third LP from one-time Sub Pop
band Swallow, recorded in 1990 but unreleased
until now, and you might be surprised to find
out that it isn't a complete suckfest-- well,
it surprised the heck out of me at least.
Not ever knowing too much about Swallow, I
was a bit fearful about listening to "Teach
Your Bird To Sing" for the first time;
but as it turns out, Swallow are more along
the lines of the poppier pre-"grunge"
bands from the Pacific Northwest that I actually
used to like back in the late '80s (meaning
bands like Chemistry Set and Treepeople) I
mean, there's still plenty of distortion and
flannel and scratchy vocals involved here--
this isn't totally removed from its time in
that sense-- and the lyrics are really frickin'
dumb, but this sounds a lot more like "And
The Horse They Rode In On"-era Soul Asylum
than Soundgarden or Tad. To put it another
way, you could play this for your friends
and tell them it's the new Two Cow Garage
CD, and they probably wouldn't even start
blinking for the first 4 or 5 minutes.
CD Reviews 
