At least a hundred people are packed into a small art gallery in downtown Portland and dozens more are lining the sidewalk out front. They are not welcoming a new art movement or even an artist, but rather are joining in the celebration of a new CD by the duo known as Swallows.

“It was crazy,” says singer/guitarist Em Brownlowe about the band’s CD release show. “I was sitting at the merch table and people kept coming up to ask, ‘Have Swallows played yet?’ I had tons of friends who I didn’t even see because there were so many people there.”
Feeding off the energy of the crowd, Swallows put on a raucous and loud performance. Brownlowe shoved her guitar neck in the face of those nearby and bounced around the small area afforded her, all the while pumping out fractured chords and singing in her distinctive come hither/ back off fashion. Drummer Jon Miller meanwhile circled around his drumbeats, ready to strike into a crashing polyrhythm at a moment’s notice. It was, in a word, electrifying.

The buzz surrounding both the performance and the band is palpable, and after one listen to Me With Trees Towering, it’s easy to understand why. Brownlowe and Miller have created a beautifully messy sound, combining tribal rhythms and off-kilter guitar work that is equal parts early ’80s no wave and late ’90s math rock. The album is both a warm nod to the Riot Grrl movement that marked Brownlowe’s early musical endeavors and a bold step in a more experimental direction.

Miller says the group is especially influenced by “the very progressive pop music that’s being made right now. Those groups that are reevaluating classical structures in music.” This reevaluation even enters the realm of the group’s lyrical content where the duo uses experimental poetry techniques or (on the propulsive “Hejinian Hymn”) cribs phrases and words from the book My Life by Lyn Hejinian. The group has also commissioned lyrics from writers and friends because, according to Brownlowe, “they could write them better than us, so why not?”

Swallows do their best to encourage and promote the work of other artists, including photographer Julia Laxer, whose work graces the cover of their new album, and by putting together a compilation CD of like-minded artists (including The Vulturines, Autopilot and Morgan Grace) “who believe in the concept of peer promotion to counteract the competitive music scene,” according to the press notes for the disc.

It is this work that Miller and Brownlowe have put into networking with fellow musicians and the larger artistic community in Portland that helped the band get voted into the lineup for this past summer’s PDX Pop Now! Festival, and according to Brownlowe, helped to stir up “a lot more press than we thought possible.” Brownlowe continues, “There’s a lot of momentum right now.”

The two will admit that having a couple of more recognizable names in the independent music world working on their behalf has helped give the band a leg up. The majority of Me With Trees Towering was recorded with the former frontwoman for The Need, Radio Sloan, and the disc is being released by Sarah Dougher’s up-and-coming Cherchez La Femme Records. “It totally sucks that this is the way it has to be,” says Miller, “but it helps to have these names attached to us.”

The band got signed to Cherchez La Femme after Brownlowe submitted a demo following Dougher’s call for submissions last year. Miller likens the label to such forebears as Mr. Lady and Chainsaw, well known for its loud support of and affiliation with the gay and lesbian community. “There aren’t labels doing what they used to do,” says Brownlowe. “Hopefully Cherchez La Femme will be like that. It’s really exciting to be one of the first bands on that label.”

Currently lining up their second West Coast tour (planned for March 2007), Swallows’ goals, for all the buzz surrounding them these days, are relatively modest. According to Miller, “We just want to have one solid show in Portland and one or two good shows out of town each month.” Brownlowe echoes those ideals: “Jon and I were talking about our magic number being 30. If we can play any town in the country and have at least 30 people come out to see us, then it will be worth it.”


www.myspace.com/theswallows