Back To The Swamp

After settling into a four-piece lineup with 2022s Baby U Know that includes bandleader Serafina Steer, drummer Rachel Horwood, the Elysian Quartets Emma Smith, and electric violinist Charlie Stock, all of whom have session work with numerous indie artists to their credit as well as involvement in other bands, Londons Bas Jan headed back to the studio to record their third album. Working with outside producers for the first time -- namely, Kristian Craig Robinson (Capitol K, Ibibio Sound Machine) and Leo Abrahams (Brian Eno, Katie Melua, Sam Amidon) -- the artily loquacious post-punks emerged with their most richly produced set of songs yet, Back to the Swamp. Full of angular, bass-heavy atmospheres and part-sung, part-spoken ruminations on the everyday, its an eclectic, searching album that touches on topics spanning capitalism, feminist history, and karaoke as well as self-doubt and shedding past selves. The latter subject is explored on "No More Swamp," a mostly sung track with tinny keyboard timbres and syncopated rhythms that intermingle with lyrics like "It used to be/But now its not what I want." Later, the dronier "Credit Card" considers the responsibility and potential social (dis)advantages of having credit ("I should listen to you/This could ruin me/This could be the last straw"), and the jazzily moody, more theatrical "Margaret Calvert Drives Out" paints a city scene with poetic descriptions of graphic design. With its noir-like electric bass, low strings, and pipe organ and trumpet tones, the tempo-shifting "Back to the Swamp" dreams about the past ("Why does a memory haunt us?"). Throughout, and unlike some of the bands more assertive post-punk revivalist contemporaries, Steers tone is considerate and nonconfrontational even at its artiest and most detached moments, and the personal and relatable outweigh the performative and tongue-in-cheek. Thats even true of a track like hypnotic closer "Tarot Card," which has the vocalist drifting into the perspectives of tarot before ending on a dreamy, two-minute instrumental outro. ~ Marcy Donelson