Swan Dive takes the notion of the addictive, sophisticated pop song to one possible limit of that venerable idea on their new full-length, Soundtrack to Me and You. The Nashville group doesn't do anything flashy on the record, and you could mistake songwriter Bill DeMain's examinations of the conventions of '60s and '70s pop-soul styles for mere retro. But DeMain and vocalist Molly Felder investigate the endless possibilities of song form in real time — Soundtrack to Me and You is a subtly soul-inflected broken-relationship record that communicates loss and heartbreak without sacrificing the kind of supernal levity that marks the best pop.
Soundtrack arrives five years after Swan Dive's 2009 Mayfair, which contained such superb DeMain compositions as "Precious Bryant" and "Topsy Turvy Love." The group's 10th full-length in a career that spans 25 years, Soundtrack takes the conventions of soul music and twists them in ways that support lyrics about the intricacies of romance and the pleasures of regret.
"When Molly and I started putting this record together, we had even entertained the notion of making a country record that would embrace countrypolitan," DeMain tells the Scene from his Nashville home. "But one of the nice things about Swan Dive is, I don't think we sound like anybody in particular, though you can hear influences. I like to embrace the stuff that really moves me and that I love."
Born in Morristown, N.J., in 1964, DeMain grew up in nearby Mendham and graduated from the University of Maryland. He moved to Nashville in 1989 and began Swan Dive in 1993. With producer Brad Jones at the helm, Felder and DeMain released Swan Dive's first full-length, You're Beautiful, in 1997.
An assured debut, You're Beautiful featured the quasi-power pop of "Blueprint" and "Beautiful Excuse." Swan Dive continued in this vein on the 1997 "Groovy Tuesday," a catchy song that made the upper reaches of the charts in Japan, where the group has achieved a popularity that has somewhat eluded them in the United States.
"They appreciate melody, you know, melodic pop, more than a lot of other places do," says Felder about the band's popularity in Japan. They're also well-known in South Korea, where Swan Dive played The Pentaport Rock Festival last year. Still, what DeMain and Felder achieve on their records is as Pan-American as you can get — I hear traces of The Stylistics, João Gilberto and Burt Bacharach throughout their oeuvre. DeMain plays excellent bossa nova-style rhythm guitar, and he knows how to place melodic, single-note licks in songs that are already bursting with detail.
DeMain's attention to detail and understated guitar chops combine with Felder's fade-away phrasing and pear-and-brandy vocal tone on Soundtrack to Me and You. Written by DeMain and Mike Viola, "Star-Crossed Lover" demonstrates Swan Dive's tension-and-release pop style — the way Felder sings the song's hook is delicious, and the composition respects the conventions of the slightly jazzy soul music it expands so expertly.
Soundtrack is addictive — play it twice and DeMain's canny structures start to echo in your head. Felder, who moved back to Nashville last year after living in Indiana for more than a decade, sings DeMain's lyrics with soulful tact.
"We're historicists, so we take that as a starting point," says Jones, who has produced nearly all of Swan Dive's records. "But we try to learn from that, and figure out our own way of doing it."
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