Description
Penelope Swales – Legacy
CD review by Tony Smith
TN1895 78 – $35
TN168 Jan 25
This retrospective album finds the prolific Penelope Swales with already two decades of songs to her credit.
As well as the CD, the bundle includes a DVD with live performances from festivals, an ad for the British Greens, a speech by a prominent Green activist kidnapped and held for six years in Colombia, and Swales’ video clip of ‘Black Carrie’.
Carrie was an inspirational environmental activist known for her long black hair.
Penelope Swales puts her beliefs into action.
She has been motivated by the need to address the crisis facing the earth because of the abuse of nature and human’s constant efforts to harness it for greed.
She has been arrested with Black Carrie at an anti-militarism demonstration.
The generous 15 tracks over some 73 minutes include ‘Legacy 2010’, ‘Black Carrie’, ‘Mother Song’, ‘Lionhearts’ © Dale Jones, ‘Our Apartheid’, ‘Black Snake Range’, ‘Car’, ‘No Way In, No Way Out’, ‘Safe Home’, ‘Guenevere & the Fire’ © Fred Small, ‘The Old Man in the Rock’, ‘Aunty Betty’, ‘Madness, Minds & Mortgages’, ‘Steel-Hearted Annie’ © Kath Tait and ‘So Lucky’.
Generally, Swales plays guitar, stomp box, beatbox and sings, providing both lead vocals and harmony.
Because the tracks are gathered from a variety of recordings as this is her tenth album, there is a huge supporting cast of musicians, recorders and producers.
Swales thanks especially Stephen Luntz to whom the album is dedicated, Mal Webb, Heidi Douglas, Brian Walters, Josephine Naughton, Peter Haydon, Carl Panuzzo, Jack Spira, Robert Dillon, Martin Stollwitzer, Maxine Eades and the staff at the Monash Law Library.
The sleeve includes the lengthy lyrics for the rewritten and recorded ‘Legacy 2010’ and for ‘Black Carrie’.
While most of the tracks are copied directly from the previously released albums indicated, ‘Black Snake Range’ is previously unreleased, ‘No Way In, No Way Out’ is re-recorded and ‘So Lucky’ is also re-recorded.
A few themes emerge with some songs linking them.
For example, ‘Mother Song’ and ‘The Old Man in the Rock’ show the importance of respect for and learning from the land and its custodians.
And although ‘Our Apartheid’ primarily concerns the symbols and icons of South Africa, Biko, Soweto and Mandela, there are warnings here for us.
This track also shows the flexibility of Swales’ arrangements, as the drumbeats are just right.
So too, the opening of ‘Guenevere’ has a nice flamenco feel.
There is some variety of arrangements but the overall impression is of busy-ness.
The songs are word rich.
In the final track, ‘So Lucky’, a capella voices bubble along in a kind of round or canon style.
The main message is spoken over a sung background, with the roles sometimes reversed.
‘Black Carrie’ should carry a warning.
This track is an ear worm and will stay with you for days.
After 2010, Swales went on to a career as a legal aid lawyer, again putting her principles into action and another album release in 2024.
This album conveys a sense of power.
Even the songs which mock the environmental villains such as cars and mines offer hope.
Every song is forcefully delivered, so that the album as a whole makes for highly charged listening.
Penelope Swales was, at the time of the release of Legacy, studying for a double degree in Law and Indigenous Studies.
If you had to choose words to describe her songs, they would include strong, fearless, well-researched, uncompromising and deadly.
Singer and songwriter Penelope Swales is at the cutting edge of contemporary folk in Australia. Like a musical journalist, she constantly tours Australia and the world. She combines wry and often outrageous humour with her deep passion for people and issues.
Her spoken word material swings from anecdotes bordering on stand-up comedy to an astute presentation of deeply challenging and thought-provoking ideas. She pokes sly fun at our failings while celebrating with insight and compassion our attempts to build a better world and our capacity for love, courage and sensuality.
