Swan Island
You haven’t heard of Swan Island yet, but you will. Their name belongs to a Portland industrial park that’s home to unclaimed FedEx packages. The title of the group’s latest CD, The Centre Will Hold (Holocene Records), is an inverted line from a W.B. Yeats poem. Their dance-metal sound combines Riot Grrrl and classic rock influences with hip-hop beats.
Founded in 2004, Swan Island has toured with such queercore staples as Bitch, Lesbians on Ecstasy, DJs Johanna Fateman and JD Samson and The Gossip. Often compared to Sleater-Kinney for both their name and regional origin, their sound more closely resembles Led Zeppelin.
Swan Island’s apocalyptic, end-of-U.S.-empire lyrics are the work of singer Brisa Gonzalez, her perspective shaped by university studies in indigenous rights activism. She and drummer Vera Domini, friends since sixth grade, watched local bands like Team Dresch rise. Brought together by Portland’s overlapping dyke and music scenes, Domini and guitarist Aubree Bernier-Clark (the star of Sleater-Kinney’s “Jumpers” video) started the band, adding friends over time. Bernier-Clark, of Louisville, Ky., brought rural Oregon native Torrence Stratton (who quit the band to work for Intel). Texas-born bassist Bob E. Kendrick recruited famed guitarist and producer Radio Sloan. “Radio and I have been tight since 1996,” says Kendrick. “She’s really pushing us to the next level.”
The unabashedly queer quintet’s star is likely only to rise, and they’ve got the chops to hold their own in the mainstream. Says Domini, “I don’t think people will care that we’re a bunch of butch dykes if we just bring it.”
Visit myspace.com/swanisland for more info. –MW
