Choir Boy are one of a number of eclectic Salt Lake City bands now graduating to unprecedented worldwide recognition and acclaim. The city has been a quiet cultural hotspot for ages, but was recently discovered as the site of a post-punk renaissance. Choir Boy are one of the softest of these in sound, but still have enough prickly spirit to rival any of their peers. More mawkish elements slip the net because they feel sardonic—exposing the emotional vacuum at the nexus of modern yuppie indie shite not by violent opposition, but wry homage.
Nowhere is this more cogently deployed than in lead single ‘Complainer’; a ballad that’s effusive with defeatism and self-pity, and riffs on a Morrissey-like “dearie me” persona even more aggressively than Morrissey does (and it helps that vocalist Adam Klopp has some of the nicest pipes in the business). But the comparison doesn’t end there, courtesy of the same buoyant instrumentation and world-class performances which made the Smiths such a listenable band. It’s impeccably constructed, beautifully assembled and mixed, but at no point feels insincere or too performative or “clean”.
A delicate, tragi-comic balance is struck; a Twin Peaks-ian tone of melodrama we cannot avoid becoming swept up in. Gathering Swans is frequently funny, but never a joke. And it can switch things up into paroxysmal sadness and beauty at a moment’s notice. This band do heaps with the smallest movements. Lyrical themes are fully-developed, but are explored with such a delicate touch it feels crass to even bring them up; like whispering art history in someone’s ear in the Rothko chapel.
The mark of a great synth pop act is that they make now decades-old techniques feel refreshed or unprecedented. With Gathering Swans, Choir Boy manage just that—beneath a cosy synth blanket is something ineffable that makes you want to recommend them to everyone you know. There is a unique sense of mystery to this band—a feeling that something profound is being withheld or concealed, and that if you listen hard enough, the curtain will fall away. Until then, it’s a really lovely curtain.
Gathering Swans is available for purchase and streaming here.
Words: Andrew O’Keefe