FEATURE:
Revisiting…
Veronica Swift – This Bitter Earth
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THIS is an album…
PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Baker
and artist I was not really aware of until recently. I am a Jazz fan but, with such a wide and exciting scene, certain albums do slip by. One that should be on your radar is This Bitter Earth by the wonderful Veronica Swift. The phenomenal Virginia-born artist is an amazing interpreter, vocalist and talent whose latest studio album is a real gem. Released last year, I am going to delve into this album. I will end with a review. Before getting there, here is some more information about a wonderful album:
“Whereas Veronica Swift’s 2019 Mack Avenue Records debut, Confessions, contained songs that played out like pages from her personal diary, on the captivating follow-up, This Bitter Earth, she flips by crafting an ingenious song cycle that tackles sexism (“How Lovely to Be a Woman”), domestic abuse (“He Hit Me”), environmental issues, racism, xenophobia (“You Have To Be Carefully Taught”), and the dangers of fake news (“The Sports Page”). The singer-songwriter gathered material that covers multiple genres, including jazz, American musicals, and contemporary indie-rock fortifying her position as a leading force in genre-bending song presentation.
“I want this album have two separate approaches,” states Swift. "I wanted to start with women’s place in society now and how it's changing. During the second half, I wanted to address other ailments in the world, whether it’s racism or fake news. But I don’t take any political stances. I’m very clear with my audience that as an artist I just want to address certain issues as an outsider looking in”.
If you can grab this album on vinyl, I would suggest you do. Veronica Swift is such an incredible songwriter and voice. Her music needs to heard and embraced far and wide! I want to bring in some parts of an interview from Jazz Times. Late last year, they spoke with Veronica Swift about This Bitter Earth and her career to date:
“As we develop, our personal truths evolve. Do you consider how your interpretations of these songs might change as you enter your thirties or your forties?
Time is the truth. Only time can validate certain truths we’ve had in the moment. When I’m singing songs I haven’t done in a while that I learned 10 years ago, I say, “Man, isn’t it crazy that I’m only 27 but I’ve been singing this song for 10 years?” The songs reflect where we are. That’s why they’re called records—they document where we are at that time. It could be something so simple as a tempo change: All of a sudden you’re doing a ballad up-tempo because of something else that happened in your life. It comes down to the story. Everyone’s got one too.
Your musical choices—harmony, phrasing—seem to emerge from what you’re accessing emotionally.
Technique is there to facilitate the emotional. It can put you in a prison sometimes. It depends on your artistry. At least for me, that technique is there so I don’t have to think: “I need to do this with my voice so I can convey this emotion.” Then you’re a robot. But when you get to the point where it’s muscle memory—you practice, you drill—then live, you have this chance to step out of your body and accept the body’s gonna take you where you need to go. There’s three of you on stage: mind, spirit, and body.
PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Baker
Is technical “imprisonment” something you’ve experienced personally?
It happens to all of us. Especially when you’re a young artist, every day it’s constantly changing. You go through this big breakthrough and then you plateau for a while. It’s very unsettling. So we’ve all been there with the technique, especially if you have a goal. That’s part of the ebb and flow. The creativity has to stop to pay attention to the core technique: “I need to get this skill and put it in my arsenal.” But I think that’s a natural part of the process. It doesn’t necessarily mean imprisonment; I use that term to set a tone for what it can be if you’re not careful. When I started to really get some bebop vocabulary, I was like, “Oh man, I got all these lines!” You just wanna use them all the time. Then you come off as “technically proficient.” A lot of young people do this, myself included. You rely on licks out of context, when the magic of improvisation is when you’re developing spontaneous melodies. It’s like, “Listen to all these lines I can sing!” And then you listen back to yourself or, with an older musician, you have your ass handed to you and they say, “Yeah, so what about it?” And then you turn the switch.
It’s interesting to hear your use of certain grooves on older tunes. There’s a sense of inevitability in a march, which feels compelling on Lee Adams and Charles Strouse’s “How Lovely to Be a Woman.” How did you approach this component and some of your other arranging ideas for the recording?
What I love about playing with the arrangement, musically speaking, is that you can convey something different. The vocalist’s interpretation could be the same, and yet, with the arrangement underneath, it could be a completely different song. For that song specifically, the idea of the march came from Steven Feifke, who did the string arrangements for this record. I was thinking: Suffragettes. “How Lovely to Be a Woman,” for me, was always sarcastic. The arrangement kind of tells the story of the woman’s battle throughout history. But also, I love singing that song because I remember being a teenager. Those feelings are true. There’s that fantasy, as well. It’s kind of ambiguous, which is the point I was trying to get across with this record.
These arrangements are almost like found objects. Were you worried your intention would be misunderstood?
That thought is always there. But this circles back to what we were saying about truth. The thing is, I’ve been through some of the experiences on this record. It comes from a personal place, how I’ve felt. There’s so much more ambiguity, especially with the personal content. The songs of abuse. I wanted to represent people that maybe didn’t know what they believed. I didn’t want this to be a record that stood for a movement, per se. There are lots of people—men and women—who are in these kinds of [abusive] relationships that want to be in them. It’s easy for us on the outside to say, “You need to get out,” but it’s a lot more complicated. Musically, I wanted to convey that, as well. [Gerry Goffin and Carole King’s] “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss),” there’s a sweetness to the music—there’s joy. It’s gut-wrenching. It’s painful. But this is something that a lot of people feel, and we can’t really talk about it.
A friend recently mentioned how today’s paradigm conditions artists to focus on the most—playing the most notes, releasing the most music, posting the most content—but really the goal is absolute recognition in a single note. Do you feel as though you’ve made that transition into true individualism, or do you feel it’s ongoing?
The second you think to yourself, “I’ve reached my goal,” you stop growing. I have the ideal that I’m reaching toward, but along the way you stay open and inspired. When it comes to finding your sound, I think you have to start by imitation. That’s how we learn to speak language, we imitate the noises. Ella Fitzgerald, Anita O’Day—you just imitate every facet of their sounds, their phrasing, their articulation. You learn the solos note by note. That’s just the first step. Then comes a point where you have to step away from the recording: “Now what do I sound like singing this?” because if you’re singing it to Ella, you’re only ever gonna sound like Ella, and there is only one Ella. That’s just an example, but it’s like being in a laboratory: trying the same thing over and over with slight differences, tweaking it like a scientist does. Then you get to the point where you don’t have to think about it. And you have to allow yourself to get everything you can out of a “phase.” I never had a moment when I thought, “Oh. That’s my sound.” I don’t even know what my sound is. I’m just doing my thing, trying to learn everything I can—and listen, listen, listen”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Baker
Jazzwise were among those to praise and applaud an album that is impossible to dislike or be uninterested by. If 2019’s Confessions was personal and like stepping into her diary, then This Bitter Earth is song cycle that deals with evils and discrimination in the modern world. From xenophobia and sexism to domestic abuse through to racism, it is such a hard-hitting but rewarding album where this phenomenal artist hooks the heart and mind from the start to finish:
“Veronica Swift's second album for Mack Avenue is an eclectic, unforgettable delight, with the singer's out-and-out virtuosity perfectly matched by a band that can take the music in any direction they please. The 13-track collection kicks off with Swift's intensely moving take on the Robbie Robertson arrangement of ‘This Bitter Earth/On the Nature of Daylight’, a mash-up which originally featured on the soundtrack to Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island. A quartet of show tunes follows which include a dazzling, gear-changing take on ‘How Lovely To Be A Woman’, with a wonderfully OTT introduction courtesy of pianist Emmet Cohen.
There are brilliant reworkings of two Rodgers and Hammerstein songs – ‘You've Got To Be Carefully Taught’, whose message of being taught to hate and fear seems sadly all too relevant, and a vibrant ‘Getting To Know You’ – plus the Gershwins' timeless ‘The Man I Love’. Swift recorded the Bob Dorough/Dave Frishberg-penned ‘I'm Hip’ on her spectacular Mack Avenue debut, Confessions, and profitably returns to both writers here. The singer taps right into the joyousness of the late, great Dorough's music in ‘You're The Dangerous Type’, in which she also detonates a towering scat.
Powered by Yasushi Nakamura's pulsing bass ostinato and some outrageous pianistic feats from Cohen, Swift channels the dry humour of Frishberg's ‘The Sports Page’ to perfection. We also get to hear the Lionel Bart-penned torch song ‘As Long As He Needs Me’ (from Oliver!), a gorgeous take on ‘Prisoner Of Love’ (which nods subtly to the great version on Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster), plus an indescribably powerful take on The Dresden Dolls' ‘Sing’, which delivers the album's final emotional payload in spectacular fashion”.
Go and seek out and revel in This Bitter Earth from the magnificent Veronica Swift. I am not sure whether she has plans to come to the U.K. and play, but she is someone who deserves to be known more over here. Such a wonder of a human and artist, This Bitter Earth was one of the best albums of last year. It is one that needs to be heard by all. If you are not familiar with Swift and her latest, then you really must…
CHECK it out.