My once-obsessive Dan Swanö worship must be getting a bit rusty as of late, as I'd missed the fact that some of the more obscure tidbits from his ceaselessly vast discography have been filtering out to Bandcamp and other digital outlets. He posted about this remixed old Subway Mirror EP on Facebook the other day and described it as sounding akin to "Buffalo Tom/Mega City Four with some early Smashing Pumpkins vibes," to which my enthusiastic reaction was: "Uhhh, say what, now!?"
I mean, I've heralded the man as a genius many times over the years and know his output is rather diverse, but Subway Mirror represents yet another mind-blowingly excellent side of his musical talents. These tracks present an interesting form of catchy alternative rock with a shimmery indie side and smatterings of those patented vocal harmonies and almost prog-tinged guitar melodies loosely reminiscent of Swanö's work with Unicorn or Nightingale. That is to say: they possess that immediately recognizable "Swanö touch"!
Apparently Subway Mirror came close to signing with White Jazz Records (The Hellacopters, Gluecifer, etc.) for the release of this EP in 1995, but that fell through and the material has never truly been released in physical form (it was pressed—at the time called Wisepope—as a limited edition CD-R back in 2011). The EP isn't on Bandcamp, but you can stream it through YouTube and Spotify, or buy downloads through Amazon and iTunes.
A small piece of my soul dies every time I'm forced to deal with a digital-only release, so I'd be ecstatic if a label were to eventually step up and finally put this stuff out "for real"...
