The recording project of Toronto songwriter and actor Sarah Swire, Sister Swire makes music best described as art rock. Music, that is, which eschews the usual conventions of genre and instead offers a version of life with all its oddness and eccentricities left intact. Speaking to Canadian paper The Coast, Swire described her persona within the project as a “feminine, timeless, malevolent entity,” a spirit for which she is only a vessel. “It’s like you’re trying to conjure Beetlejuice,” she continued, “but you get Sylvia Plath—and, like, she’s just got a bone to pick.”
With a debut record produced by Joel Plaskett on the way later this year, Sister Swire have been releasing a series of singles, and previous track ‘I Shot the President’ was a great introduction into the project’s beguilingly evocative style. “A dark lullaby written in response to The Devil and Daniel Johnston documentary,” as we described previously, the track explored “the experience of bipolar and psychosis in all of its ominous and multifaceted scope.” A song over which Johnston’s presence hung, the vocals holding “a conflicted tone somewhere between gentle and troubled,” and the idiosyncratic lyrics standing out with their strange charm.
Latest single ‘Pulleys and Gears’ might offer a different tone, but its style still very much possesses that singular Sister Swire personality. It’s an upbeat and mischievous track which holds up a bright front to hide its claws. Because beneath to infectious momentum and left-field charm sits a sizeable mean streak, embracing a malicious side and refusing to care who it upsets along the way. In other words, an encapsulation of the Sister Swire project. Entirely and wholehearted its own thing, regardless of what anyone else might think.
‘Pulleys and Gears’ is out now and available from the usual places.
