Jan Swerts > new album & shows

06
/
09

Jan Swerts > new album & shows

The journey that Swerts undertook on his debut album along the fading places and people of his youth ended in a dead-end street towards a cemetery. The fascination for that place where every story ends was destined to result in a graveyard album.

The new album, his fourth already, is a musical graveyard journey. Oud Zeer/Lingering Grief contains ten piano tracks, each of which is named after epitaphs of graves Swerts likes to visit during his dwellings. 

Musically, Oud Zeer/Lingering Grief is a lot more bare and boned than his previous albums. Piano, voice, some sparse guitar or strings: that’s all there is. And if he previously liked to point out the influences of Nick Drake, Jotie T’ Hooft and Wim Mertens, this time Swerts was mainly inspired by The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe (‘Nevermore’) and Hejiraby Joni Mitchell, one of his favorite records. Oud Zeer/Lingering Grief – released by Unday Records (12/11) – is a memento mori, in which Swerts, in his typical mix of singer-songwriter and classical music, reminds us of the comforting fact that soon we will be here…nevermore.

listen to “Lig hier zacht & stil” a first track out of the new album
all release shows can be found here