The Wild Swan
Foy Vance
LPA
- Noam Chomsky Is A Soft Revolution
- Upbeat Feelgood
- Coco
- Casanova
- Bangor Town
- Burden
LPB
She Burns
- Be Like You Belong
- Unlike Any Other
- Ziggy Looked Me In The Eye
- Fire It Up
- The Wild Swans On The Lake
Foy Vance has announced details of his first album for Gingerbread Man Records, the label launched last year by Ed Sheeran and Atlantic Records with Jamie Lawson’s self-titled No.1 album. Released May 13th, The Wild Swan was recorded in Nashville and produced by GRAMMY Award-winner Jacquire King. Recording legend Elton John is the album’s Executive Producer.
"I feel so privileged to be a part of this remarkable artist's first album on Gingerbread Man Records,” says Elton. “He is an extraordinary writer and singer."
Foy Vance and Ed Sheeran are long-term friends who have frequently toured and collaborated together. For The Wild Swan – an album that makes nods to, and takes cues from, heroes ranging from Noam Chomsky to Ziggy Stardust to WB Yeats – the pair’s relationship moves to another level.
“I’m so happy to be releasing Foy’s album on Gingerbread Man Records,” says Sheeran. “I’ve been such a huge fan since the first time I saw him live...I’m constantly blown away with how talented he is. The Wild Swan is an amazing album and I can’t wait for everyone to hear it.”
One of the impetuses behind Sheeran founding Gingerbread Man Records was to give musicians he truly believes in complete artistic freedom, and so he made his friend an incredible offer: the chance to make a new album with an Artist-led record company, with full support and without constraint.
“Ed said, ‘go and make the record you want to make.’” Vance took him at his word.
This freedom enabled the Aberfeldy-based Irishman to craft The Wild Swan entirely to his own vision, in Nashville’s legendary Blackbird Studios aided by Jacquire King, who recorded and mixed one of his favourite albums, Tom Waits’ Mule Variations.
“Mule Variations is not only an exquisitely-written record but a wonderful sounding record,” says Vance. “I actually flew out to meet Jacquire in person before agreed to work with him because I wanted to look in the whites of his eyes and make sure we’d be on the same page. I didn’t want something too clean and polished and commercial.”
That said, there’s no denying that The Wild Swan has all the ingredients to be a very big album. It opens with Noam Chomsky Is A Soft Revolution, a rock’n’blues celebration of a roll-call of musical, philosophical, literary and polemical insurrectionists. It ends with a dash of uilleann pipes and The Wild Swans On The Lake, a stop-you-in-your-tracks breath of Celtic balladry inspired by WB Yeats’ The Wild Swans At Coole. Vance’s rich voice also gets up close and personal on the hymnal Burden, then digs deep for lead track She Burns, a song and a performance evocative of Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel Of Love, which is available to stream and download now when pre-ordering the album.
On the ancient-but-modern Be Like You Belong, Vance’s soulful rasp weaves through pedal-steel and simple piano chords. Ziggy Looked Me In The Eye is a piano-based, strings-buoyed soul-stirrer, a dignified tribute to, says Vance, “various people who I think have been part of a revolution. I’m not talking about Che Guevara or Ghandi or even Russell Brand for that matter – I’m talking about personal revolution. I like that idea constantly revolting against your own parameters.”
This thinking no doubt informs Vance’s enthusiastically embracing the opportunity of his summer tour with Elton John.
