It’s rare for a band to be great and be the first band its members are in. Not to say that the bands that the guys from Universe Contest have been in weren’t damn good, but something is going on with this incarnation that never quite clicked completely in the way it does now. The press has been universally (pardon the pun) positive in its praise of the band. Fans in the crowd have been rowdy, smiling and singing along, and the band has found itself in a position of having multiple songwriters that can bring something to the table, creating an infectious sound that varies from discord to harmony within the same song in a way that always keeps the listener enthralled.

The lineup includes Tim Carr (vocals, guitar), Joe Humpal (vocals, guitar), Brenton Neville (drums, vocals), John Freidel (keys,vocals) and Bonehart (bass, vocals). They’ve been compared to Modest Mouse, MGMT and Dismemberment Plan, yet a most recent review said “Take away the Modest Mouse overhang and they’re harder to pin down. As the name implies, they’re spacey, but not shoegaze spacey or Bowie spacey. Spacey like a group of Midwestern hillbillies who got ahold of a stack of Popular Science magazines and figured out how to build their own spaceship from abandoned grain silos, Case tractors parts and the cockpit from a hollowed-out ’73 Maverick. I can see them now sitting on the launchpad in their overalls, their hippie hair sticking out of their gold-painted football helmets. 10.9.8.7…” (Lazy-I, Omaha)

If Tom Waits and Nick Cave had a daughter and that daughter were raised by gypsies in narrow back alleys and secret woodland glades and taught the ragtag music of vagabonds and wondering sailors then she might sound something like Black Swift. And that’s not to mention plain old rock and roll which Black Swift keeps tucked away in their traveling bags, to be used as needed. The world of Black Swift is a steam-punk world, of rusty chains and dead pirates, the lord god almighty bringing us home and a whole lot of mixed up busted up love.

Wenn Tom Waits und Nick Cave ein Tochter hätten, die bei Zigeunern in finsteren Seitengassen umherziehenden Matrosen aufgewachsen wäre, würde sie wie Black Swift klingen. Ganz zu schweigen vom guten alten Rock n’ Roll, der aus der Reisetasche gezaubert wird, wenn er denn gebraucht wird. Die Welt von Black Swift ist Steampunk, ein Welt aus rostigen Ketten und toten Piraten, und versteckten Waldlichtungen und mit der zwielichtigen Musik von Vagabunden und in welcher der Allmächtige uns inmitten all der verwirrten und zerbrochenen Liebe annimmt und nach Hause bringt.