Premiere: Black Swan Runners, ‘Ff Ff Fire’

Kevin Bronson on
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On their debut album “An Aside,” Black Swan Runners manage to sound like the best of the indie-rock ’90s without sounding dated. The quartet, formed from the ashes of CoCo B’s, relocated from Orange County to the Humboldt County burg of Ferndale to make the album, which simmers with tense bass lines and stabbing guitars and, more than their previous work, incorporates electronic textures and atmospherics. Whether Kevin Castillo, Joe Rivera, Jeff Randall and Bob Penn are playing the loud/soft dymanic or charging ahead four-on-the-floor, there’s always a payoff, either in a memorable chorus or in a deliciously noisy squall. Other rock songs have used the stuttering lyric to great effect; their single “Ff Ff Fire” does too. “An Aside,” which was produced by the band and mixed by Alex Newport, comes out next Tuesday.

||| Download: “Ff Ff Fire”

||| Also: Stream “West of the Ten”

||| Previously: “Sooner or Later”