Richard Swift
Dressed Up For The Letdown
Release Date: Feb 20, 2007
Genre(s): Indie, Rock, Singer-Songwriter
Record label: Secretly Canadian
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Album Review: Dressed Up For The Letdown by Richard Swift
Fairly Good, Based on 2 Critics
Based on rating 3/5
You'd hardly guess this was a solo album: it sounds like a scrap between at least three personalities. Least appealing of these is the bitter musician who has spent years struggling for attention. His complaints blacken Artist & Repertoire, a morose piano ballad, and Kisses for the Misses, which contrives to be both furious and off-puttingly jaunty at once.
Opinion: Fantastic
Before Richard Swift was unleashed on a world of generic rock and electro dabbledry, there was no such thing as timeless vaudevillian angst. There were no contemporary piano balladeers. Swift's Dressed Up for the Letdown might be this generation's escape hatch. Unlike the lo-fi undulations of impressive 2005 double debut The Novelist/Walking Without Effort, the Oregonian songwriter's sophomore LP is a blasting foghorn, loud and clear.