In the mid-to-late 1980s, lots of bands popped up that sounded like Echo & the Bunnymen. On the surface, the Wild Swans were one of them. But their story was unique.
The band’s debut album, Bringing Home the Ashes, didn’t appear until 1988. But the Wild Swans had already established their reputation for starry-eyed guitar pop magnificence with the “Revolutionary Spirit” single in 1982. release was actually produced by the Bunnymen’s Pete De Freitas. Both the Wild Swans and the Bunnymen were signed to Bill Drummond’s Zoo label. The two bands were contemporaries.
Wild Swans leader Paul Simpson is set to release the band’s first album since Space Flower in 1990. The Coldest Winter for a Hundred Years is released August 1 in Europe and the following day in the US. Simpson’s always-fluid band now includes ex-Bunnymen bassist Les Pattinson as well as members of Brian Jonestown Massacre and Spiritualized. Here, via Slicing Up Eyeballs is a free download of album track “In Secret”. Thankfully, the band’s windswept sense of nostalgia hasn’t aged at all.