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Sep 10, 2018 John Grant By Austin Trunick

Singer John Grant lends his distinctive voice to Ethan Gold’s lead track for The Song of Sway Lake—Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, out digitally on September 21st from Lakeshore Records. The album contains Gold’s jazz age-influenced score to the new film, with contributions by notable artists such as John Hassell, Fred Frith, The Staves, and Maria Lilc.

Normally we’d introduce the track with a longer lead-in, but this is a case where we don’t want to get between you and the ‘play’ button below. “Sway Lake (Lost Record Version)” sounds like it was ripped straight from a long-buried 78rpm record found in a grandparent’s attic trunk and freshly cleaned of five-plus decades’ worth of dust. John Grant, in a guest vocalist role, performs like a bona fide crooner of yesteryear:

Ari Gold’s feature film, The Song of Sway Lake, follows a young music collector who recruits a friend to help him steal a one-of-a-kind WW2-era record from his family’s lakehouse. The plan changes when his grandmother turns up with her own plans for the long-lost recording. The film stars Rory Culkin, Robert Sheehan, and Mary Beth Peil. (You can watch the trailer below.) Like the soundtrack, the film will also be released on September 21st.

Ethan Gold’s soundtrack features multiple, highly-varied arrangements of the above song alongside more than 40 other compositions for the movie. The film’s director, Ari Gold—also Ethan’;s twin brother—explained the importance that music plays to his movie: “We filmed on Blue Mountain Lake, New York, a public lake, selectively editing to create the sense of a glamorous once-private estate. Despite the intimate cast and crew, the schedule was in constant flux as we worked with the ever-changing weather, dancing to the piano when the power was sometimes knocked out for real. And as with the weather on the water, music was an integral part of the theme of an uncatchable, idealized reality. My twin brother Ethan Gold (with singers John Grant and The Staves channeling the era) created two versions of a song, to round out the lost world. The past reaches to us in rain, in water, in memory, in melody, and in death. But the past does not really exist. Only this exists: what’s outside our windows and in our hearts at this moment.” (Ethan Gold also releases music under the name Vyprz, and produced Elvis Perkins’ acclaimed debut album.)

The Song of Sway Lake—Original Motion Picture Soundtrack will be released digitally by Lakeshore Records on September 21st. (John Grant’s next album, Love is Magic, releases on October 12th.)

(www.lakeshorerecords.com)

(swaylake.com)