Pitchfork

If Swan Lake's three men share three traits, they are: obliqueness, dramatic flair, and existential angst. Here Spencer Krug, who helped craft both Wolf Parade's thumping, wailing pow-wows and the raucous expressionism of Sunset Rubdown, takes the lead both as writer and singer. Yet it sounds like he's aping another Swan Laker, Destroyer's Dan Bejar. But rather than whistling glam-rock mythologies through his nose, however, Krug charts a quiet tour of romantic metaphors and resignation. The song has a fatalistic arc, building and building, from hushed folk minimalism to an autumnal, keening kitchen-sink catharsis: all rustling wind chimes and whistling synths and sputtering guitars. That these elements don't crash together in an artsy over-calculated Sturm und Drang of "literate" self-reference is a feat in itself. Instead they co-exist peacefully, half storybook village, half rustbelt hamlet.