Swordpoints

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RomanGames Blog review of 'City of Oblivion'

Review of 'City of Oblivion' by Swiss journalist, rock musician, gadfly and bon vivant Roman Elsener:

Read Roman Elsener's review

We Ours EP Review

The kind folks at Neverlearnedtoswim Music Blog have reviewed the We Ours 'I Like Your Mind' EP.

Never Learned to Swim's Review of 'I LIke Your Mind' EP

Dog Blog

My dog blogs each day against the tree right in front of our building: just his brief comment on the local news, daily, sometimes a few times a day. Around the neighborhood he also likes to keep up with regional news, see what's going on, and often makes many comments, but knowing he only has a limited amount to express, he saves his comments for topics he really cares about, where he has something to say. The raised step entrance to the 5th Street Dry Cleaners, for instance, or the overgrown leafy area on the corner of Rodney and Marcy; there's usually something there he feels compelled to remark on.

I admire his regularity and his boundless curiousity; he always wants to keep informed, and he almost always has a lot to add.

I like to think he's learned some things from me.

"Encore Status" Blog Review of 'A Sentimental Education'

Here's the full text of the Encore Status review. Thanks, Sporky!

I like Anton Sword. Affable chap. Very smooth. Haven’t met him, but I appreciate how clean, how subdued he is on his album “Sentimental Education.” I hope Anton will forgive me for assuming that his house doubled as an airport lounge, but I’m starting to think that’s the case, first from the album’s cover, and also from the music. Anton is a crooner. He shows great range in that style of singing, so he can sound spooky on “Infrared,” (more due to backing vocals as opposed to his own voice) or melancholy as when he sings “Throw yourself away, Throw yourself away/ Liquefy your face, Liquefy your face.” He seems to feel that the pop artist’s job is to reflect emotions to the audience as opposed to experiencing them firsthand, and I like that about him. The most emotional track on the album is “Standing on the Precipice,” a track that more directly adheres to adult pop conventions, but even that draws back at points when it feels itself getting carried away. The guitar work directed by Sword on this track is particularly impressive (guitarists were Julian Maile and Erik Paparazzi) because it is smooth, measured, and soulful all at once. It suffers a little at the end, specifically because it does abandon its restraint a bit, but maybe that’s part of the fun. Still, amazingly good track.
Anton’s is an act that thankfully eschews kitsch or cheese, or at least an overdose of those elements, and takes the material as seriously as any emo artist. “Liquefy” is the most comprehensive of his tracks, as it’s all subdued sincerity and ambiguous haze . I like that Anton feels free to wander about his keyboard, and the solos have a pleasant sense of timid spontaneity. He likes to squiggle, like a kid coloring in the margins with a glitter pen, but there is plenty of method to the wandering.
Then again some of the other tracks such as “The Instrument, Your Friend,” or the aforementioned “Infrared” sound more urgent, and even a little panicked. They traffic in ambient territory, and help by adding shades to the starbursts. “My Judgment” is much more of a bad trip though. Here, he subverts much of the album with some very harsh production that almost sounds like the wailing of space ghosts in an arty sci-fi movie. It comes off a bit overwhelming, if extremely skillful, and contrasts, unfavorably, with his more salient tracks. The production is, as I said, skillful, but at times inconsistent in that it sometimes compliments its surroundings, and sometimes swells to the point of overwhelming itself. There are violins and heavy stings, kind of like Phil Spector, but it comes and goes too much. These are quibbles really, and highlight just how accomplished this all is for a debut. The bottom line is that Anton has already crafted a pretty steady persona, and laid out some very strong thematic work in the realms of liquid, light, and indecision.

-Sporky

http://encorestatus.blogspot.com/2008_10_01_archive.html

"Wildy's World" Blog Review of 'A Sentimental Education'

Here's the full text of the Wildy's World blog review: Thanks, Wildy.

Anton Sword - A Sentimental Education
2007, Anton Sword

Sometimes a record can move you to different places and times. It happens in a mood or a well-placed hook or the tone and timbre of a passage. Anton Sword is good at invoking time and place in his music. The time is the late 1980's, the place is a basement in the suburbs where vaguely displaced teens hang out and listen to Robert Smith & The Cure or some other mildly depressed but incredibly talented band. A Sentimental Education draws heavily on that 1980's new wave/goth vibe, yet weaves influences as disparate as 1970's keyboard work and even some electronic enhancements straight out of the Fax catalog.

A Sentimental Education is dark and scintillating and full of texture imbued with an anachronistic melancholy. Anton Sword is a storyteller with an artist's ear for music, constructing these vast musical landscapes against which his bard's tales are told. My personal favorite here is Behind The Scarlet Curtain, with Liquefy a close second. Many of the songs here segue one into the other almost like an epic tale made of smaller stories. The overall effect is very entertaining yet mellow.

The musicianship here is outstanding. The production values are minimalist and highly appropriate for the music. The music speaks for itself here in the ultimate act of artistic bravery. It works. Support Anton Sword by checking out his music and buying a CD. Early returns seem to indicate that you will be rewarded by a long association with Anton Sword.

Rating: 4 Stars (Out of 5)

http://wildysworld.blogspot.com/2008/06/cd-review-anton-sword-sentimental.html