Jeff Callahan is a talented poet. That fact cannot be denied. However, based on what his audience gets with Empty Swings, I’m not sure the same can be said of Callahan’s musicality.
Empty Swings is a spoken word album, so rather than hearing Callahan sing his poems as lyrics, the listener gets Callahan reciting his poems as poems.
This in itself is by no means a bad thing. However, the music that accompanies the spoken word throws off the entire album.
On Empty Swings, Callahan’s poems are backed by the music of B.D. Lenz. Just as Callahan is a gifted poet, Lenz is a skilled musician. The problem is that the work of the two artists doesn’t mesh very well.
Taken individually, the spoken and instrumental aspects of Empty Swings are both pretty good. Callahan’s words are beautiful, thought provoking, and full of descriptive imagery, while Lenz’s music is well-performed jazz. Unfortunately, the music doesn’t fit with the words.
With the exception of a couple of songs, Callahan’s words and Lenz’s music just feel mismatched. The upbeat jazz doesn’t seem at all well placed with the fairly deep, sentimental lyrics—one has to wonder why Callahan chose that particular music to back his poems.
The incongruity between the words and music makes it confusing to listen to Empty Swings. Since the two aspects of the album don’t sync up, the listener has to choose to focus on either the words or the music, which shouldn’t happen on an album—especially when the music stands out more than the lyrics on an album that’s centered on the words.
Overall, Empty Swings isn’t terrible. A little disappointing at first, but it gets better the more it’s listened to, largely because it gets easier to reconcile the words and the music.
Hot Tracks: Sweet Dreams Earth, Garden of Your Spring, A Sigh and a Shrug
2.5/5 Stars
April 4, 2010
