Take Nick Cave’s seed, incubate in PJ Harvey for nine months, and you’d produce a voice pretty close to Schvendes lead singer Rachael Dease. Build a country-rock ensemble comprised of siblings on bass, cello, keyboard, guitar and drums, amplify their morbid streak, and you have the sound. But find a genre for them? There’s a task.
Instrumentally, their second album, Sweet Talk Your Enemies undulates between country, blues and gothic tinged by rock, polka and jazz. Lyrically grounded in tension, tragedy and terror, Schvendes’ exploration of love, vengeance and regret is inimitable and fresh. Repent & Repeat’s polka piano opens the album, providing a contrast for Rachael’s restrained vocals to invite you back in time, “My weary guests/come to the parlour.” Mary Bell then shocks you into the world of a suburban murderess and the band’s complicity with her crime. Lyrics, “You’re a bad seed, a bad seed, a bad seed Mary Bell,” give a subtle nod to the influence of Nick Cave (and his Bad Seeds).
A country-rock ballad, Small Mercies, Sweet Graves (the album’s first single) is a track to mourn human frailty by your lover’s side. The initially serene instrumentals ascend insistently until they abandon the vocals amid the chorus for powerful effect. Followed by Sleeping Dogs you wonder if Small Mercies, Sweet Graves promise to “never part” was betrayed. Sleeping Dogs is someone’s revenge on a cheating lover, its ominous drums building to a revelation, “And everybody knows/the sleeping dog is lying.”
Second single, Twice the Man, is straight-up get outta her way fem-rock. With a fuck-you-up guitar riff backing this chorus, “I’m half the girl you see down before you/But I’m twice the man that you’ll ever be,” you have to pity whoever inspired this song. No track explains Schvendes as well as Bring Out Your Dead. Lyrically mature, its discussion of journeying through life is tempered with melancholy and uplifting renewal. This is matched instrumentally with thick bass picks to ground the despondent ascendance of the cello.
Schvendes’ PJ Harvey homage Turn Out Your Lights tells of defiantly loving an unlovable nihilist. Tristen Parr’s gliding cello almost steals this track, as it does on Oh, Marlon. The album concludes with Hymnsong, a patient farewell at eight and a half minutes long. Ennio Morricone’s (of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly soundtrack fame) influence is made obvious through this track, particularly in Matt Maguire’s powerfully restrained drumming. Its acquiescent message is augmented through spare instrumentals and dejected vocals.
Sweet Talk Your Enemies is a very mature second offering, best explored alone with the lights out. Its genre-defying qualities aside, it should appeal to a wide audience from deep country/blues devotees to roots and alternative fans. If you always wanted Tim Burton to compose your requiem, add a note about Schvendes to your will.
