Black Swan Green: Blurt Best Kept Secret

Latest pick of cool artist in our ongoing collaboration with Sonicbids.

By Fred Mills

The BLURT staff put our heads (and ears) together and we have our December pick for our Blurt/Sonicbids "Best Kept Secret": it's Brooklyn's Black Swan Green, whose recently self-released album The Ruin Gaze is an utterly compelling miasma of psychedelia, shoegaze and pop.

Tune in to BLURT radio if you want to hear an MP3, "Waxwing," by the band - just click on the music player image on the right hand side of our homepage and it will cue up automatically.

Why "Black Swan Green"? That's the name of an acclaimed novel by David Mitchell, and as band co-founder Hugh Crickmore explained in a recent interview with BLURT, "The title seemed like such a great band name, I kept walking by it in store windows and thinking, ‘I love the way that name looks.' I was hesitant at first to use Black Swan Green with the plethora of animal band names that saturate the scene. It seemed all the good ones were taken. Though officially it is a place name and not an animal..."

We'll have more of the interview and give you the full lowdown on the band next week. Meanwhile, check out the band's MySpace page: www.myspace.com/blackswangreennyc. And congratulations to Black Swan Green. They're one of the good ‘uns, trust us.

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Bands, go to www.sonicbids.com/blurtonline to submit and have us review your materials for feature consideration.

Our November Best Kept Secret: The Handcuffs, from Chicago.