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Written in fRoots issue 238, 2003
 

SWÅP
Mosquito Hunter
Amigo AMCD 750 (2002)

It’s been over a year getting UK distribution, which means (though it needn’t have) that it hasn’t been sent for review until now, but Mosquito Hunter shows just what a major band is Swåp, the hot combo comprising Karen Tweed, Ian Carr and Swedish fiddlers Ola Bäckström and Carina Normansson.
      Myggjagare, “Mosquito hunters”, is a Swedish expression for winklepicker shoes such as those sported by the left-field-dapper Ian Carr, who now lives in Bäckström and Normansson’s hometown, the traditional music nexus of Falun. Carr is, it must be clear to anyone who’s had the delight and amusement of watching him either with Swåp or as the guitarist of choice of many other discriminating musicians, one of the most brilliant and individual guitarists Britain has ever produced. Often diverging and syncopating just in front of or behind the main pulse, or playing right across it, he nevertheless miraculously always supports, indeed intensifies, the rhythm for the other players. His playing has evolved into a single-person tradition. That he’s never made a solo album, nor indeed takes solos, is remarkable but characteristic; it just isn’t what he’s about.
      The energy and lushness of the Swåp sound is perfectly displayed here. Not only are all four extremely hot players, with what seems like perfect communication in arrangements that bring a frisson to each turn of a tune, they all write shapely, ingenious tunes, or in Carina’s case here a eulogy to crème fraiche, sung in a caressing, reflective way suggestive of Kari Bremnes. Though it’s possible she would modestly disagree, her singing matches her fiddling in excellence, and it makes a very welcome reappearance later, with an edgier, almost telephonic sound in The Three Ravens, a version from the tradition of Tweed’s current home county, Derbyshire.
      So rich are the band’s own compositions that there’s no qualitative difference between them and the scattering of time-shaped traditional English, Irish and Swedish tunes among them. In a sort of mutual folk-process in the course of intensive playing together, they’ve explored and developed their own material as if it were traditional; there’s none of the preciousness or incompleteness new compositions committed early to record often have. Their charm and memorability is further compounded by totally unpretentious titles such as I’m Not Fed Up With The Pacific Ocean and This Is My Pen.
An album of the year, however long it took to get here.


© 2003 Andrew Cronshaw


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