Kevin Bronson on August 29th, 2016

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If you like your indie-rock big and bold, driven by intricate guitars and weighted by gravitas, meet Mute Swans. The L.A. quintet sounds like what might happen if Explosions in the Sky and the National locked themselves in a room to keep all the synth-slinging, falsetto-singing children at bay. Their self-titled EP, released earlier this summer, is full of cathartic moments and sometimes-oblique references to torturous relationships, and escaping them. The five-song release, says singer Brett Bickford, is informed by the notion “that we cannot choose the family we are born into, but we can choose the people that we surround ourselves with and care about us. Ultimately, this is the ‘family’ that matters most. There’s a quote by Oscar Wilde that has always stuck with me: ‘Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.’” Mute Swans formed in 2014 as the trio of Bickford, Tom Arizmendi and Jonathan Morrow, later adding the rhythm section of Dustin Treinen and Dean Cooper. The single “Another Year” is rock cinema even without a light show, and “Seventeen” is a muscular declaration that Bickford has moved on, with the band going for epic and getting there.

||| Stream: “Mute Swans” EP