- la Jungla is a quote from Townes Van Zandt, his description of a drug-addled, booze-fuelled trip south of the border; it’s Spanish for -you guessed it- the jungle. Kyle Jenkins of Suicide Swans takes it more generally as a symbol of all the many ways a person can be lost. It’s both a fitting and yet a funny name for the band’s latest full-length. Fitting because the record’s full of that archetypal, broken country sadness and also a roaring richness, really orchestrating a sensation of rising confusion and wild-eyed insanity. Just take a song like Willow and the ever increasing Jack White wail of the chorus: “You gotta calm down or you’ll never stop / Ain’t no need to fight it / It’s gonna dri-i-ive!” As disturbingly appropriate as it might be it’s also strange, because, for all of the intense emotions wrestling like vipers through la Jungla, Suicide Swans are band with an almost unnatural level of focus.

They don’t muck about. Their latest and lushest indie country epic is a big record, laid down quick smart and only the most recent chapter in what is becoming a very big discography. If we’re counting, this is their second full-length in a year, with a third due in six months. What we get is, fortunately, not just more of the same. There’s an observable evolution in the Suicide Swans’ sound. They’ve always embraced the expansive roots-rock recipe book of ‘60’s Americana. A band like The Band might have been, first and foremost, a pop group, but they could play country and soul and everything in between. An admitted influence on the Swans, in their case they’ve moved from a sparse folk-rock on into something bigger and more imposing with every release. In a couple of records time I wouldn’t be surprised to find them stadium-sized and thundering like Springsteen.

For all that they pay homage to the hallmarks of the tradition they also make these sounds their own, not least thanks to Jenkins’ distinctive voice. He doesn’t sound like The Boss, but he does have some of the sung-spoken leatheriness that belonged to Townes Van Zandt and he can turn his thin but piercing tenor into that terrifying, Jack White channelling shriek. There are also comparisons to be made to the scooping style and moodiness of Nick Cave, the sand-papery drawl of Dylan and even the confessional intimacy of Thom Yorke. In short, it’s a highly versatile voice, the many facets of which add up to something quite recognisable as its own thing.

Another conspicuously individual element is the way la Jungla came together. Created in a single, thirteen hour recording session, fully two-thirds of the songs here only existed as chord-progressions and lyrics before Jenkins presented them to the rest of the band, on the day. The Swans set up in the expansive but hushed surrounds of the USQ Amphitheatre in Toowoomba and let fly in the hopes of capturing not just the energy of a live performance, but something of the essence of genuine creation. Well, it’s hard to get much more raw and immediate than playing songs you’re making up on the fly.

It’s a recipe for disaster if I ever heard one, but the results speak for themselves. More than that, la Jungla has the range of expression -roaring highs to tiny intricacies- that you expect from the most neurotically mixed studio creations.  

la Jungla is, as per the title, confusing. All those oh-so-country tales of woe, everything sounds like it’s coming undone, except the band, who despite all appearances are, duplicitously and absolutely in control. Oh well, talented grifters are very much a country thing too.

- Chris Cobcroft.