Richard Swift The Atlantic Ocean

Meticulously arranged and gorgeously recorded (including a session at Chicago's famed Wilco Loft), Atlantic Ocean is an immaculate kiss off. It's a cheeky - if not wholly acrimonious - takedown of music industry artifice and hipster culture vapidity. "I'm part of the scene... I got the right LPs," Swift begins the album on the title track over fuzzed Casio stabs and a clunky, bounding drum machine. The chorus of "Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, You're gonna drown, drown drown," is itself a wee stab at a major label of a similar name. Across the entire album, Swift is burning bridges and the exposing trolls underneath. As the timeless Sly Stone-leaning burner "Lady Luck" stretches to it's climax, you get the sense that Swift has put his faith and trust into the familial love around him and not in the dangling carrot of music. Alongside 2007's Dressed Up for the Letdown and 2018's posthumous The Hex, Richard Swift's The Atlantic Ocean (2009) completes his triumvirate of meta-pop masterpieces.