No Filler Music Podcast - Sidetrack: Cock & Swan - Seattle’s Darling Dreamgazers

Episode Date: September 8, 2019

On this week's episode, we listen to a few tracks from our favorite shoegazey dream pop act out of Seattle, Cock & Swan. Johnny Goss and Ola Hungerford have a knack for creating these wonderfully dark & dazey, lusciously lo-fi tunes, often with jerky, slightly odd rhythms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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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 dreamy, but not in a, not in more of 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 sidetrack 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 gaze 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 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?

And I felt like... So it's, for us, it's bands like Sea Pony or, I think they're called Smith Westerns, remember them, or like, Surf Blood. Or Surfer Blood, I think is what they're called. Surfer Blood, yeah. Yeah, or Beach House. Yeah, Beach House. Bands like that. Because the term Dream Pop kind of took its own.

It just, it was a second iteration of it. Like, you know, Dream Pop in the, in the early 2010s, I think was way less. There's almost no shoegaze in it, in my opinion. I mean, really. You know, there was a lot of reverb and some fuzz, but it was. from a like a wall of of sound approach you know it was more almost like surf I mean that's a reason why like think about it dude beach house uh beach fossils do surf yeah no you're totally right dude I mean think about it they all had that beach surfy those those words like that

you know yeah you're absolutely right a lot of those bands were very beach aesthetic I can't use the I can't use the word beach house. You could, though. That's the 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 to me, I didn't realize this. but the names Dream Pop and Shoe Gaves 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. Yeah, sure. And that's why I think Cock and Swan is a great example of a contemporary band that kind of fits in between these two genres.

Yeah, I can see that, especially with her voice. Like, her voice is definitely very, very monotone. Yeah. Yeah, 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 what, you know, 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 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 lot, I feel like they start off. Well, actually, I have a quote here. Um, 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?

Hmm. Now, okay, so the song that I'm going to play for our soundtrack 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 try, you know, they change up. I mean, don't they kind of change up to time? signatures and stuff like that and

yeah stuff like that and change up to rhythms and beats and stuff yeah so um the album i'm pulling from is called secret angles came out in 2013 and i'm going to jump down to track seven on the record so this song is called inner portal so they 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 Like, there is some fuzzy, distorted kind of aspects 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 Starseeds? Her voice has sort of a similar vibe to the lead singer of Starseeds. And you know what's funny? Like there's not much information on them when you, 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, I've lived up here for going on five years, you know, going on six years now. Cock and Swan is, is by far my favorite band, local band that I've discovered since moving up here because there's just, it. It'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. 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, hypnotic state shoegaze, you know? Yeah, yeah.

So how do they classify themselves? I mean, sometimes you can go to like a, uh, a band camp page or something like that and they'll list out the genres. So like, I'm on the, I'm on the, I'm on the band. campaign 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 experimental vocal laced Dream Pop. There we go. So there you go. Now that's that's probably somebody who reviewed the album.

But this came back in 2013, dude. I know, dude. Holy, 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. It's, yeah, it'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 it. But that means that they, you know, hey, I mean, 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 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 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 side track Crosby Sills and Nash maybe yeah but that's the 60s that's something 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, how it formed 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 podcast, 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've referenced. So check that out as well. Like I said earlier, next week we're going to dive into yes in 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.