Swell – with Treble Charger at Bill’s Bar – Review

Swell

with Treble Charger at Bill’s Bar
by Barbara Restaino

Prolonging the experience of the $4 pack of cigarettes I was too lazy to go around the corner and get for $2.50, I hung around at the back of the club, listening to the quirky, Weezer/Pavement-like opening band, Treble Charger. I was waiting to see a band that hasn’t toured the East Coast in three years. Swell‘s albums have a layered quality capable of sucking the listener into each song, and each song sucks you into the rhythmic Swell experience. The new album, Too Many Days Without Thinking, is no different, and I’ve always wondered whether the experience would be the same live. The answer is… no, but I was most likely delusional in thinking it was possible to find an atmosphere conducive to it in the first place.

In order for Swell’s albums to translate live, they would have to play an entire album, each of which has a definitive beginning and end. And your attention would have to be focused on the music, not on some chick almost knocking you down on the way to the bar, or the guy trying to pick you up on the way to the bathroom, or the group of people squeezing into your booth. While I was busy comparing the first few songs to my high expectations, Swell was rockin’ out for the group of people who had gathered near the stage, away from the bar-hoppers and as close as possible to a band I had still not actually seen live. So, I excused and elbowed my way up front to find a group of regular-looking guys playing drums, acoustic and electric guitars, bass, and sometimes keyboards — a little uneasy on stage, but at ease with the music. And by about the third song, “Throw the Wine,” the first track on Too Many Days…, some of the barhoppers had found their way up front to find out just who this band was that happened to be headlining the night they happened into Bill’s Bar.

By now I had put the Swell I knew to the back of my mind and was concentrating on the group of musicians in front of me. And by now, the band had found comfort on stage bringing old and new favorite songs like “Song Seven” and “At Lennie’s” to life. And by now, lead singer David Freel’s soar throat seemed to be enhancing his already low, voice-box vibrating voice. I would still love to hear a live version of a Swell album, but I enjoyed the Swell that adapted for the noisy, half-interested Bill’s Bar crowd.