No Filler Music Podcast - Rewind: Dark and Dazey - The Music of Cock & Swan

Episode Date: October 10, 2022

Following last week's episode on Bowery Electric, we pull from the No Filler vaults with our episode on Seattle shoegaze group Cock & Swan. They pick up where Bowery left off with a similar blend of shoegaze and downtempo. Johnny Goss and Ola Hungerford have a knack for creating these wonderfully dark & dazey, lusciously lo-fi tunes, often with jerky, slightly odd rhythms. Tracklist: Secret Angle Inner Portal Holding On This show is part of the Pantheon Podcast network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's better h-elp.com slash no filler. Thanks again to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode. Welcome to No Filler, Travis here. And I'm just here to queue up this rewind episode for you guys. Quentin is, of course, out doing his dad stuff. Being a father, it turns out it's a full-time gig. I mean, you know, who would have thought that? But, you know, he's changing a diaper or what else do you guys do?

That's what I still do. That's all it is, right? Isn't that, that's the whole job? Anyway, he's out there doing that. We had talked about last week, replaying this episode on a Seattle-based duo that go by the name Cock and Swan. And last week we talked about Bowery Electric, a 90s shoegaze group that incorporated electronic and trip hop elements into their shoegaze and sort of created this really unique sound, which was kind of a precursor to what was just around the corner with a lot of indie rock groups. You know, Radiohead put out, okay, computer

right after Bowery Electric's album beat, where they first started to kind of play around with that idea. So anyway, this band, however, Cock and Swan, they've been around since like the early 2010s. Again, they're based out of Seattle. it is Johnny Goss and Olga Hungerford. Yeah, they're doing the same kind of thing. So if you liked Bowery Electric, you're going to really love this episode here. This was actually a sidetrack episode. So if you've been listening long enough, you might remember what the sidetrack episode was all about.

A good example would be, let's say we did an episode on REM. The sidetrack episode could be the minus five, which is a side project of the guitar player of REM, Peter Buck. He had a side project called the minus five. And so maybe we do a sidetrack, quote, unquote, on REM and talk about this more obscure side project from the guitar player, right? That kind of thing. So funny enough, Cock and Swan was our side track episode for My Bloody Valentine's Loveless,

which was essentially the first episode where we started talking about shoegaze. So that was back in 2019. And, yeah, I'm going to stop talking now. and I'm going to queue up the episode. And you're going to see what I'm talking about. Again, this is a really, really well-done, well-executed mashup of dream poppy vocals and really awesome trip-hop, down-tempo, ambient kind of electronic music, just like Bowery Electric. Okay, here we go.

Once again, this is Cock and Swan, and this is our sidetrack episode from 2019. Until next time. My name is Travis. Thank you as always for listening. Find us on Instagram. Just search for No Filler Podcast. You can also find us on the Pantheon Podcast Network. That's Pantheonpodcast.com.

Here is our sidetrack episode on Cock and Swan. Welcome to No Filler, the music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Quentin. I've got my brother Travis with me as always. And this is our sidetrack for our My Bloody Valentine episode on Loveless that we covered last week. We've been hanging out in the Shugays world for a little too long, dude. So I wanted to kind of switch it up for this episode.

We're going to cover a duo from Seattle. They go by Cock and Swan. And I feel like they're like a perfect, like, blend of quote unquote dream pop and shoe gaze. What do you know about these guys, dude? Well, you turn me on to this group, I don't know, maybe a year ago, maybe more. I know that they're from your neck of the woods. And I've, the moment you showed them to me, like, I loved it, man. I love the, I love the mood that they put out, you know.

Yeah. It's sort of got, it's got a lot of different, like, elements. Like you said, you know, there's some shoegaze. It's,

it's dreamy, but not in a, not in more of the, the poppy way that some dream, dream pop acts are. You know, they're more of a, they have a dark tone to them sometimes,

you know. Yes, very dark. And they also do a really good job bringing in like, almost down tempo elements or at least electronic. beats and stuff, you know. Yeah. So, okay, here's the story. We were trying to figure out what to do for a side track for My Bloody Valentine. And we were realizing that like, all right, if we do another shoe gaze band from the 80s or the early 90s,

then this is going to be three weeks straight of just nothing but shoe gas bands. Yeah, we got to mix it up, man. We'd like to mix it up around here. Yeah. So I was trying to think of a band that would. kind of fit perfectly in like like in between these two genres because we mentioned last week that to us because of our age and you know because of our circumstances around like the 2010s dream pop to us is a very specific genre you know um and i felt like so it's it's for us it's bands like

sea pony or i think they're called smith westerns remember them or like uh surf blood or Surfer Blood, I think is what they're called. Surfer Blood, yeah. Or Beach House. Yeah, Beach House. Bands like that. Because the term Dream Pop kind of took its own. It was a second iteration of it.

Like, you know, Dream Pop in the early 2010s, I think was way less. There's almost no shoe gaze in it, in my opinion. I mean, really. There was a lot of reverb and some fuzz, but it wasn't from a like a wall of sound approach, you know. It was more almost like surf. I mean, that's the reason why like, think about it, dude, beach house, beach fossils. Dude, yeah, no, you're totally right. I mean, think about it.

They all had that beach surfy, those words like that, you know. Yeah, you're absolutely right. A lot of those bands were very. beach aesthetic, you know. I can't use the word beach house as a description. You could, though. That's a funny thing. You could use that word to describe it.

Because that's what they were all about, man. But yeah, I don't think the dream pop term back in the 90s meant that. You know, it didn't mean what it meant for us, you know, what it meant in the 2010s. Yeah. So what we had said last week was that, and this was a surprise. prize to me. I didn't realize this, but the names Dream Pop and Shugaves were synonymous in the early 90s. Because, you know, the British press, they were describing the same music. And, you know, a big part of that sound was this, like you said, wall of noise. And another term that they used was like this droney kind of vocal approach, I guess.

sure um and that's why i think cock and swan is a great example of of of a contemporary band that that kind of fits in between these two genres yeah i can i can see that especially with her voice like her voice is definitely very uh very monotone yeah yeah so so when i moved up here in 2014, I became obsessed with searching for and discovering local artists because I just, you know, it's Seattle, you know. It's probably a lot of people do that when they get to Seattle. It's like, hey, I'm in, you know, the birthplace of grunge music. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. And I found cock and swan, and it's, it's two people. It's Johnny Goss and Ola Hungerford. So Johnny, you know, provides most of the instruments and the producing, you know, of the beats and all that stuff. Ola also plays a few instruments and she's the singer. And they've been making music together since 2003. And they started out very bedroom pop. So we mentioned like, what's the difference between dream pop and bedroom pop last week?

Yeah. I don't know if we came up with a definitive. answer either. We really didn't, but like the whole point is, you know, this is the kind of music that you can make by yourself in your bedroom, you know, with a, with a track or whatever. Or with just a microphone and a garage band or whatever. Yeah. And the thing that Cock and Swan is all about, and if you listen to any of their albums, it's very prominent. They're all about creating these really unique rhythms, you know, like a, like a lot. And, you know, like a lot of, you know, lot, I feel like they start off. Well, actually, I have a quote here. So, this is quoting Johnny Goss. Usually we start with rhythm or theme. We often come up with an idea like,

how jerky can a drumbeat be and try to push as hard as we can without hurting the listener's feelings? Now, okay, so the song that I'm going to play for our sad track is going to be pretty tame, like, after hearing that quote. But if you listen to a lot of their music, it does feel like they try to push the limits as far as like, okay, what can we do that is so like, like you said, jerky as far as rhythm goes? How far can we push that where we know that our listeners are still going to be, you know, entertained or not offended?

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So they change up, I mean, don't they kind of change up to time signatures and stuff like that? Yeah, stuff like that. Change up to rhythms and beats and stuff. Yeah. So the album I'm pulling from is called Secret Angles. Came out in 2013. And I'm going to jump down to track 7 on the record. So this song is called Inner Portal.

So they do those like transitions really well, you know? Yeah. The reason that I thought they would be good for this side track is like there is some fuzzy distorted. Sure. Yeah. Kind of aspects to their, to their music. But like most of it is synthesized, you know?

Yeah, yeah. Well, so her voice makes me think of, and I feel like we've talked about these guys before, but you remember the star seeds? Her voice has sort of a similar, similar vibe to the lead singer of Starseeds. And you know what's funny? Like there's not much information on them when you do like a Google search. They don't have a Wikipedia page. I don't even know how we stumbled upon them.

And I think it was probably one of those albums that came up on a Pandora station or something like that back in the day. Yeah. But they were this like sort of down tempo, electronic band from, I don't know, Sweden or something like that. But they had that very like ethereal vocal quality, you know. Yeah, they had an album that came out in the late 90s. Those are one of those bands where I keep trying to find a good excuse to play them. Yeah.

But yeah, cock and swan, dude. They, I feel like they're my, so far, like to, so I've lived up here for going on five years, going on six years now, Cock and Swan is by far my favorite band, local band that I've discovered since moving up here because there's just something about the mood, you know, and like just the music that they create together. It's just something about it, dude.

Yeah, to me, it's that mood, man. It's that darker side of, because I mean, that's like we were saying, like Dream Pop, at least how we associate the word Dream Pop, It's more upbeat, you know, more like surf, surfer kind of music, you know. Which, yeah. And like real estate and all that, you know. We didn't really mention real estate, but that's another group that would kind of fall into that.

Yeah. And it's, it's, uh, I feel like that's what puts Cock and Swan like right in the middle of like, you know, modern day dream pop and good old droney, like repetitive, uh, hypnotics. state shoe gaze, you know? Yeah, yeah. So how do they classify themselves? I mean, sometimes you can go to like a band camp page or something like that and they'll list out the genres. So like, I'm on the band camp page for secret angles right now and they classify themselves. Yeah, Dream Pop. They use the word Dream Pop. There you go, Q.

Cool. Yeah, here's how they describe it. Their strongest statement yet, confidently showcasing their intoxicating and darkly lit take on experiment. vocal laced dream pop. There we go. So there you go. Now that's probably somebody who reviewed the album. But this came back in 2013, dude. I know, dude.

So they have another full-length album that's come out since then. Yeah, I've listened to some of that, and it's a little bit more electronic-y. That's a word I can use here. It's definitely a little bit more experimental. It's called Julian's Sword. It came out in 2017. And it is an album that is just loaded up with kind of filler tracks aren't the right word, but they've got like reprise. We don't talk about filler on this podcast.

Yeah, you mean like a bridge or something like that? Dude, filler's the best word to describe that. But that means that they, you know, hey, I mean, we talk, it seems like we're talking about this every episode now. But that clearly means that this is an album that's supposed to be played from start. start to finish if they have bridges like that that literally take you from one song to the next, you know. Yeah, and I have done that with this album. And I remember, like, really enjoying it all the way through the first time I heard it.

Yeah, so that's the sidetrack for today. I'm going to outro us out with another song of theirs. So what do we cover next week, dude? Have we landed on one? Yeah, I think we We talked about doing fragile, but yes We did Then that's going to be something else, dude

Because it's been a while Since we were in the 70s What was the last album that we covered from that era Probably I mean, I'm not gonna I mean, I guess we did James Taylor a few weeks back But that was a sidetrack Crosby Sills and Nash maybe

Yeah, but that's the 60s That's the 60s, like have we done an album from the 70s yet maybe not dude dude here we go I'm excited to dive into psych rock

what do they fall under no progressive they're progressive there we go I feel like we should dive a little bit into the history behind that you know how oh absolutely

and all that good stuff absolutely yeah so look forward to that next week you can find us on our website no filler podcast com

you can also check us out on the Pantheon podcast network, where you can listen to dozens of other excellent music podcasts, including our own. You can check that out at pantheonpodcasts.com. And you can also find us on just about anywhere else you can listen to podcasts. We're on Spotify now. You can check us out there.

Of course, we're on iTunes and Stitcher and all the other podcast apps. So there you go. on our website, we post show notes with every episode where we list out the tracks that we played and list out any articles or interviews that we referenced. So check that out as well. Like I said earlier, next week we're going to dive into Yes and their album, Fragile. And we're going to outro us out with another Cock and Swan song. This is from their 2010 album Unrecognized.

We're going to play track six. It's called Holding On, and that's going to fade us out for today. My name is Quentin. My name is Travis. Y'all take care. It was the night before the gathering and all through the house. The host rapid cozy cashmere throw from Home Sense for their spouse, kids' toys for $6.99 under the tree, and crystal glasses for just $14.99 for their brother Lee.

A baking dish made in Portugal for Tom and Sue and a nice $599 candle, perfectly priced, just for you. Happy holidays to all. And to all a good price. Hom Sense. Endless presents perfectly priced.