She’s blonde and petite, and if it weren’t for those spiky dreads pulled back into playful ponytails, you’d think she was the girl next door in her sheer burgundy top and casual jeans. Her voice sounds like a muted trumpet through the microphone. This isn’t some fancy metaphor: she’s threaded the signal through a guitar pedal, twisted and peaked and distorted it until the gossamer sound of angels emerges every time she opens her mouth. Even her name is out of this world: Ember Swift.
She’s one of the hottest faces of a new school of music. She calls it folk-punk, but it’s a far cry from the merry jigs in the tavern that most associate with folk and more country hoe-down than most associate with punk. And the key difference? The serious tech.
Strangely, this new form of electronic folk fusion makes for a wild night. Why is it only here at this junction that political fervour meets experimentation? Lyndell Macgregor, Swift’s bass player, bows her guitar, producing unearthly tones. She’s a one woman drum n’ bass outfit, tapping the side of the bow against the wood for the beat, hitting the strings for reverberating effect. She plays an electric violin, bizarre black rod with no body whatsoever. Like other bands, these guys could not play an acoustic gig. At least, not like this.
Years ago, I went to see Michael Franti in his then-band Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. Like Swift, the band relied on tech, tech and then a bit more tech. For them, it was early sampling, scratched in speeches from corrupt Californian gubernmental candidates and teevee informercials. For some reason, the electronics that night at Selina’s failed, and the band was forced to play raw, unprocessed. As anyone who’s heard Franti’s new Songs from the Front Porch will know, the sound was still incredible, the power of the voices and the anger and knowledge in the lyrics still moving and intense.
No, technology doesn’t hold up new music; it’s not a crutch or a cover for lack of talent. The truly talented just use whatever they can get their hands on to get their message across. With Swift and Macgregor, that’s anything from the politics of vegetarianism to the war in Iraq, boinking the bride and all the way back again to drought and land management. What is it with these talented women and their ability to make even anguish toe-tapping? As the old slogan goes, it’s not my revolution if I can’t dance to it. And I can tell you now, last night, my feet didn’t stop once.
