Acclaimed singer-songwriter Emma Swift has shared a video for “The Resurrection Game,” the deeply personal title track from her eagerly awaited new album. An official lyric video is streaming now on YouTube.
“This is a song about love and loss, about how there’s no escaping grief, it comes for us all, about how the more we love, the more we have to lose,” says Emma Swift. “I wrote it after attending an experiential therapy retreat in Northern California called the Hoffman Process. I went to Hoffman because I’d been feeling stuck, and my friend Sarah recommended it to me. It’s a bit of a hippy thing to do, but I’m a bit of a hippy at heart.
“I’m not sure if this kind of retreat is for everyone, but it did help me unearth some complicated feelings, particularly around the way I was brought up, and the inherited beliefs and patterns I was carrying around unconsciously. Naturally, these feelings started to become songs…
“In Calistoga
Where the redwoods grow
I’ve come to
To excavate your bones…
“Redwood trees are towering beauties, ancient and resilient. They are the tallest trees on earth, and can live for thousands of years. The Scottish naturalist, John Muir described them as the cathedrals of nature. I like that. One of the reasons they grow so tall is because they’re able to move and bend with the wind. I learned a lot just by being near them. Mostly about my own flickering life, how small it is in comparison.”
Swift’s first full-length collection of all original material and eagerly anticipated follow-up to 2020’s Blonde On The Tracks – which earned worldwide praise for the Sydney, Australia-born, Nashville-based artist’s inspired reimagining of eight classic Bob Dylan songs through her own unique musical perspective – The Resurrection Game arrives everywhere on Friday, September 12 via her own Tiny Ghost Records. A wide variety of formats are available, including digital, CD, premium D2 black vinyl, cassette, limited-edition lavender vinyl, and limited edition blue swirl vinyl. All vinyl editions were pressed at Denver, CO’s Paramount Pressing and feature deluxe packaging with a gatefold sleeve and rice paper inner bag. Pre-orders/pre-saves are available now.
The Resurrection Game was further heralded earlier this week by the premiere of the poignant “Beautiful Ruins,” accompanied by an official lyric visual streaming now on YouTube. Among the album’s many other highlights are such recently released singles as the rhapsodic “No Happy Endings” and the languorously romantic opening track, “Nothing and Forever,” the latter joined by an official music video shot on 16mm Kodak film in Malibu, CA by musician and filmmaker Paige Stark.
Shifting gracefully between intimate confession, philosophical musing, and elegiac storytelling, The Resurrection Game sees Emma Swift fusing timeless singer-songwriter touchstones to her own extraordinary experiences with an exquisitely melancholic song cycle born of a personal crisis which left her shattered and forced to pick up the pieces of her inner life. Strewn with keenly incisive wit and heartbreaking accuracy, songs like “How To Be Small” bridge the gap between traditional folk songcraft and self-revelatory confessional poetry, the exactitude of her devastatingly candid admissions lifted aloft by the subtle strength of her deep-blue vocals and an evocative breadth of gorgeously baroque musical flourishes.
“I am a big believer in the redemptive power of art,” Emma Swift says. “Though many of these songs come from a an immensely difficult time in my life, what I’m trying to do here is to alchemize the experience. To make the brutal become beautiful.”
The seeds of The Resurrection Game were sown on the heels of a seven-week “nervous breakdown” that saw Swift sectioned in her native Australia. Over a year of recovery followed, a “very fragile” period in which she grappled with what had happened through therapy, medication, and eventually, her art. Working with producer Jordan Lehning (Kacey Musgraves, Rodney Crowell, Caitlin Rose) at Chale Abbey, a residential studio built within a stone barn dating back to the 16th century located on the downs at the southern tip of England’s Isle of Wight, as well as Lehning’s The Duck in East Nashville, Swift assembled a cadre of Nashville’s finest, most in-demand players, including pedal steel master Spencer Cullum (Steelism, Miranda Lambert, Angel Olsen), guitarist Juan Solorzano (Devon Gilfillian, Sheryl Crow), bassist Eli Beaird (Merle Haggard & Willie Nelson, James Bay, Luke Bryan), and drummer Dom Billet (Yola, Phosphorescent), with Lehning handling keyboards and other instruments.
Together Swift and her collaborators conjured an unabashedly melodramatic, “deliberately lush” musical milieu brimming with imagination and communal energy, Lehning’s ornate arrangements creating an atmosphere so intense and cinematic that Swift’s tragic tales of catastrophic psychological collapse ultimately prove buoyant and exhilarating. Despite the myriad unpleasantness of her experience, Swift tells her story with raw clarity and the power of contemplative hindsight, her remarkably self-assured vocals capturing her undeniable anguish but also, within such songs as “No Happy Endings” and “Going Where The Lonely Go,” romantic joy thanks to the understanding and sustenance provided by her husband, legendary British singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock.
Grounded firmly in enduring musical traditions yet utterly contemporary in viewpoint and execution, The Resurrection Game immediately confirms Emma Swift as a singularly gifted singer and songwriter of immense skill and spirit. Swift trusts to her core that the act of creating something so passionately personal, of giving in completely to her life-altering heartache and despair, is the truest path towards greater connection with her art and the world outside.
“I believe that there is a space for songs about real pain,” Swift says. “In this moment in time, we live in a world where we’re encouraged to anesthetize what ails us by any means possible. But this record is more about spending time with your sadness, of leaning into that sorrow and facing it head on.
“Hard times are a part of the seasons of any person’s life. You don’t have to have an acute mental health crisis to understand this. Everyone experiences grief, pain, tremendous suffering, at one time or another. I wouldn’t want to live through that particular season again, but I feel duty-bound to honor it. And so I have.”
Swift is currently celebrating the impending arrival of The Resurrection Game with a very special Undertow tour, a series of major market club dates and intimate fan-hosted events continuing into September. In addition, this Friday, August 15, will see Swift performing at the famed 3rd & Lindsley in her adopted hometown of Nashville as part of WMOT’s weekly free Americana showcase, Finally Friday. For complete details, please visit www.emmaswift.com/shows.
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EMMA SWIFT – THE RESURRECTION GAME. (Tiny Ghost Records) Release Date: Friday, September 12
Tracklist:
- Nothing and Forever
- The Resurrection Game
- No Happy Endings
- Going Where The Lonely Go
- Beautiful Ruins
- Catholic Girls Are Easy
- Impossible Air
- How To Be Small
- For You And Oblivion
- Signing Off With Love
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PRAISE FOR EMMA SWIFT + BLONDE ON THE TRACKS
“Emma Swift has dropped a tender rendition of ‘Queen Jane Approximately.’ A highlight from 1965’s Highway 61 Revisited, Swift’s cover showcases her delicate vocals over a 12-string Rickenbacker guitar.” – Rolling Stone
“Her high, clear voice highlights each syllable, letting you hear the words form, one seemingly following inevitably from the other, until they feel handed down, fragments of an old song now speaking to each other.” – Greil Marcus, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Swift navigates Pat Sansone’s majestic folk-rock arrangements like the able captain of a frigate sailing over shimmering seas.” – Bud Scoppa, Uncut (8/10)
“Nobody has ever sung Dylan quite like this Nashville-based Australian singer-songwriter, nor with such a rare interpretive gift. It’s a beautiful piece of work by a singer with a rare interpretive gift, comparable to Emmylou Harris’s Wrecking Ball in its intent, execution and intimacy.” – Andrew Stafford, The Guardian (****)
“Swift is known as a gifted vocalist, and the folk-rock-leaning recordings on Blonde on the Tracks firmly situate her versatile, emotive voice front and center. The album opens with “Queen Jane Approximately,” on which Swift delivers a vocal performance that is at once delicate and tough, recalling the sturdy sultriness of Cat Power or Jenny Lewis.” – Britt McKenna, Nashville Scene
“Rarely has he been covered so tenderly as on this quietly impressive (and wittily titled) collection by Australian-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter Emma Swift. The result is eight great songs sung anew with empathy and sensitivity.” – The Irish Times
“There’s a purity to this collection that allows both Dylan’s poetry and Swift’s emotion to shine; she embodies tracks like ‘Simple Twist of Fate’ in a way that makes it feel like she wrote it herself.” – San Francisco Chronicle
“In her signature slowcore style – Swift describes her special talent as being the anti-Paul McCartney: able to “take a sad song and make it sadder” – but with elements of jangly ‘60s guitars (‘Queen Jane Approximately’), moody country (‘One Of Us Must Know’) and soul (‘Going Going Gone’), she finds a way to soothe and enrich, just as the songs had done for her.” – Bernard Zuel, Sydney Morning Herald
“Swift never falters over the course of the album. Who knows what she tapped into here to pull this off, but the emotional depth and softened bite from the original could certainly patch up relationships, but also end wars.” – Under The Radar (8/10)
“Swift’s vocals are delivered in a way that is so intimate that it feels as if she’s whispering about the ownership of her soul straight into your ear. Swift possesses a fine, delicate voice that gives these songs a soft, approachable feel. It never once drags or feels like a chore to listen to, for she pulls you in and keeps you enthralled for the duration.” – MusicOMH
“An exceptional piece of work by a shining star based out of Nashville.” – The Big Takeover
“Emma Swift has a great voice, and more than that, as a songwriter herself, she knows how to interpret songs, and with Dylan you get some of the best songs ever written.” – AmericanaUK (8/10)
“Swift used Dylan’s astute reading of humanity to find her own way back to the light in a way that should satisfy hardcore fans as well those who usually find his voice grating.” – Louder Than War
CONNECT WITH EMMA SWIFT
EMMASWIFT.COM | BANDCAMP | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | SUBSTACK | YOUTUBE
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Press Contacts:
Ken Weinstein
weinstein@bighassle.com