Pitchfork

It's a rare thing when a group develops an original sound, and rarer still when it's both honest and appealing. Swell, a band of San Franciscans that got together toward the end of the 1980s, did just that over the course of their first three records. Their self-released, self-titled 1990 debut was confused in a manner not unlike Slint's Tweez: though littered with street-side samples and thin ideas, cuts like the unfortunately titled opener "Get High" and "Dan, A Son of God" still shone through, giving glimpses of a signature sound that fermented into a powerful brew by the time of 1993's superb 41.

Impressed by Swell's more focused sophomore LP, ...well?, Rick Rubin's American Recordings signed the group in 1992 and re-released it nationally. "At Long Last" put their best foot forward, and didn't carry as much dead weight ("Down" is one of their finest moments), but ...well? did little to increase awareness of this peculiar, straightforward acoustic pop band. Decidedly terse, and not a little cocky, Swell boasts a strange stoner swagger that's inspired recently lauded acousti-crazy acts like Grandaddy as much as The Flaming Lips or Mercury Rev.

Frontman David Freel has a voice that's alternately subtle and aloof; it's a combination that-- perhaps not surprisingly-- isolated the band's initial success to France, where they're still adored. Easy jokes aside, Swell's 1993 debut for American is absolutely one of my favorite records of the 1990s. A dark, depressed look at low life, 41 was recorded in and inspired by San Francisco's Tenderloin district, where the band rented out warehouse space at 41 Turk Street. The album's overcast, midtempo tributes to the Bay Area's underbelly caught the attention of many critics and musicians, if not as many record buyers; it was followed in short order by a fantastic Sub Pop single ("Summer Songs"), but as critical acclaim outweighed commercial success, Swell faltered. Mightily.

Following their creative flourish in the mid-90s, the band floundered for two years while recording their follow-up, eventually damning themselves in its title, Too Many Days Without Thinking. Exhausting the resources American had allotted, the band worked with Kurt Ralske (Ultra Vivid Scene) in SF and NYC before finally completing the record in 1996. After American rejected it, their much happier European distributor Beggars Banquet took Swell on full time, certain they could make their money back abroad. Although they did, and the album features the best song Swell have ever recorded ("What I Always Wanted"), the band was definitely losing their way. Over the next few years, their highly inventive drummer Sean Kirkpatrick was in and out of the proceedings; by 1999's flat For All the Beautiful People, Swell were becoming an embarrassment to their own career. Singer David Freel waved the white flag in 2001, releasing his solo album Everybody Wants to Know under the Swell name. Few bands have bounced back from such overt disintegration.

Whenever You're Ready counters that fatalism: Swell's seventh album is the most sonically lush and compositionally intricate they've released, as good as Too Many Days Without Thinking. Their focus on new techniques has its ups and downs, however; though it more closely inserts the band in the current landscape, it distracts and detracts from their finest attribute: their simplicity.

After a promising if predictable two minutes of their trademark sound ("Soon Enough"), the paired "Next to Nothing" regroups as a coda for every move the band have employed over the years. Foot-stomping acoustic riffs, an insistent drumbeat, samples of psychopaths, and a solitary, distant keyboard line surround lyrics that reveal Swell's intention: "Gonna put the past away." After the fatuous "War Comes Down"-- a serious misstep this early in the album-- "Convince Us" returns to the simple patience of their heyday, but it's the guitar lines and bells ringing throughout "So Easy, So Cool" that reveal a hitherto unthinkable commercial appeal. The tune could easily work laid over a mainstream teen romance flick, but for fans, it plays as pure nostalgia for the long-lost college days Swell soundtracked.

In the wake of such a triumph, much of Whenever You're Ready fades into the monotony that overwhelmed the band's lesser late-90s albums, relying on their sound rather than songwriting-- and shouldering a formidable 15 tracks, the record isn't going to win them many new converts. "Word Gifts" and "Miss It" peek through toward album's end, but after forty minutes of two-chord strumming, the band's unique approach becomes exhausting, and the drifting "Always Everything" can't support its seven straight minutes. The thin, repetitive closer "California, Arizona" is inexplicably billed as the record's lead single, but I doubt if many listeners will make it past the unfulfilled early promises that frontload Whenever You're Ready.