The Black Swans

The Black Swans, a Columbus, Ohio ensemble devoted to darkly hued yet poignantly melodic indie rock with folk leanings, first revolved around the foundational trio of singer-guitarist Jerry DeCicca, violinist Noel Sayre, and bassist Canaan Faulkner, though both recordings and performances regularly incorporated shifting assemblages of additional musicians. Established in 1999, the group’s forward movement was interrupted when Sayre relocated to West Virginia for several years; material for their debut album began taking shape in 2000, yet recording did not conclude until two years before the 2004 appearance of Who Will Walk in the Darkness with You? on the Nashville independent imprint Delmore Recording Society.

A more compact follow-up arrived next in the shape of the five-song 7-inch EP Sex Brain, which examined the tension between id and superego. After receiving favorable notices for those first two releases and sharing bills with Okkervil River, Damon & Naomi, Michael Hurley, Richard Buckner, Mark Eitzel, and the Schramms, the Black Swans delivered their second full-length album, Change!, in fall 2007. La Société Expéditionnaire issued the compact-disc edition, while the vinyl pressing presented distinctive covers hand-painted by students at the Arc North Workshop, a Columbus learning facility serving the developmentally challenged.

Sayre’s death in a 2008 swimming accident at a public pool marked a profound loss. The band returned in April 2010 with Words Are Stupid on St. Ives, the boutique label operated by the Secretly Canadian collective; this further conceptual statement on language’s shortcomings included austere violin passages recovered posthumously from Sayre’s hard drive and was pressed in a limited run of 250 LPs plus digital files. Don’t Blame the Stars surfaced in spring 2011 on the Misra imprint, followed by Occasion for Song in summer 2012.