Some would have you believe that music is a young person’s game. That may be true if you are into fleeting fads and fashion, looking for poster boys, glamour girls, celebrity crushes, and keeping up with the zeitgeist. But the best and most long-lived music rarely emanates from those quarters. And even if you were once the hip young things, why shouldn’t you return to the fray, older, wiser, and more experienced?
Thirty years ago, The Sway were the hip young things, riding the indie/brit-pop wave, but sadly also a reminder that the Gods of Music are fickle creatures, and sadly, the big time never beckoned. Fast forward to last year and the re-release of their 1995 EP, Going Blind, and the realisation that the songs found there have more than stood the test of time, so the only logical course was set… new music!
Well, sort of… the song was written in ’94, played live sparingly, and never recorded, so what we have here is an old idea brought bang up to date for today’s discerning music fan. The result is a glorious slice of contemporary indie with just enough of a nostalgic (Verve-esque?) echo to keep us persons of a certain age happy.
Dynamics are key: the song ebbing and flowing between serene and spacious sonics and salvos of raw guitar, from underpinning urgent keyboards to anthemic crashes and crescendos. It is at times lighter than you might expect and also occasionally heavier than their back catalogue might suggest. This is stadium-ready indie whose power and poignancy give the most deft and decisive rock bands a run for their money.
“Twice in a Lifetime” is everything that it should be. The sound of a band writing the next chapter of their musical autobiography, one that may have its roots in the realm of Cool Britannia but which has now left all that behind, standing firmly on its own two (or should that be eight) feet. It is the sound of a band coming back to the studio for all the right reasons. They have the wisdom and worldliness of people who have lived normal lives and are back in the zone only for the love of making music with lifelong friends.
Even though they return with the bright lights and possibilities now faded into the background, ironically, this is proof that they are able to release records that should really be giving chart staples a run for their money.
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