The Triffids - 'The Black Swan' (Domino) Released 07/04/08

Five albums into a career defined by increasingly ambitious goals, The Triffids seemed more restless than ever. 'The Black Swan' is just as opulent a production as 'Calenture', its predecessor, and as intense, in parts, as 'Born Sandy Devotional', their classic. It departs from those and all of the band’s earlier works in its wild eclecticism, yet it somehow holds together, as a collection, almost as well as anything they did.

Conceived as a double album, 'The Black Swan' was eventually scaled back to a single slice of vinyl by a record company whose ambitions were rather more focused on mainstream success. For the Domino reissue, all of the tracks recorded at the same sessions have been restored, adding twenty minutes to the length. And strangely enough, though these tracks are generally the weaker ones, the album itself benefits. As with all the Domino rereleases of The Triffids’ albums, this version is truer to itself: it’s easier to appreciate and understand the vision behind it. The Black Swan' sprawls like never before, switching style and direction with deceptive ease, and is a more satisfying listen for doing so. But it also shows what the band had learnt: the songs here typically work better as big-production numbers than those on Calenture, which often felt a little stretched.

The opening of the album is as strong as any sequence The Triffids ever put together. 'Too Hot To Move, Too Hot To Think' evokes the heat of an Australian summer, and though it might be seen as slight in comparison to some of McComb’s other lyrics, it’s beautifully observed. Exactly the same can be said for 'American Sailors', a mere fragment of a song that leaves you wanting far more, and the largely electronic 'Falling Over You'. Between them, they set a pattern for the album: the aim with The Black Swan was apparently to create a series of specific and different atmospheres, something in which those opening tracks and the album as a whole succeed brilliantly.

If 'Born Sandy Devotional' could be likened to a great Australian film,' The Black Swan' is more like a festival of shorts, and as stylistically diverse. 'One Mechanic Town' harks back to the sound that dominated BSD, but introduces hints of a spaghetti western; The Spinning Top Song has an equally Australian feel to its lyrics but draws its sound from black urban America, without ever feeling borrowed or forced; the accordion and operatic backing vocals on 'The Clown Prince' bring cabaret to mind.