Mourning work as a glam rock psych pop party.
When producer and songwriter Richard Swift died in the summer of 2018, the major US indie scene reacted with shock: Swift was not a star, but a networker and mentor. The list of his collaborations is long; The many memories showed that he was a cool character. Swift also worked for Foxygen, the psych-pop duo somewhere between genius and madness. Rado, Foxygen’s musical mastermind alongside singer Sam France, dedicates his first solo album FOR WHO THE BELL TOLLS FOR to the mourning after the death of Richard Swift.
He introduced his producer colleagues to a number of secrets, for example the fact that you shouldn’t make things too easy for yourself when arranging and composing. The song “Easier” is a reminder of this – self-ironic, because the (very good!) chorus is repeated very often. Anyway, the album doesn’t sound downbeat. Rado celebrates the music, cheerfully quotes through the history of glam rock and psych pop, and when he says goodbye in the finale with “Yer Funeral”, he does so with an instrumental in which he imitates bagpipes without the sound bothering you.