Spotlight On... Paulie Swan

In some corners of the internet, there has been a swelling buzz over the past few months about Edinburgh-based singer-songwriter and producer Paulie Swan, drawing comparisons to Cameron Winter. Following the release of his single Me vs. Mothra back in January, at the end of June he very quietly released his debut EP, Swans Today, four tracks that see Swan beautifully wearing his heart on his sleeve, expressing his vulnerability through vivid imagery and lyricism, with a voice so rich and weathered, it’s hard to believe it belongs to someone so young – Swan is only 20-years-old.

Having already shared stages with the likes of Jacob Alon and with slots later this year at festivals like Green Man, Tenement Trail, Neighbourhood, Left Of the Dial, Pitchfork London and Pitchfork Paris, it felt like a good time to catch up. We talk early influences, film imagery inspirations, and look to the future. 

Firstly, congrats on your debut EP – it’s lush! Before we talk about that, I’d love to know more about you – who/what inspired you to get into music, and was music a big part of your household growing up?
Thanks a lot! Growing up I spent most of my time inside on whichever computer was around to kill slowly with cracked software and Trojan viruses. The internet let me learn everything about what I found cool but couldn’t afford. I was really into the soundtracks for Sonic the Hedgehog games, EarthBound, Jet Set Radio – what have you. Shows like Adventure Time, Futurama, Cowboy Bebop and Hey Arnold! had really great music. I heard a lot of different genres, sometimes before I knew what that meant. The music I like came through headphone cups and laptop speaker grills instead of a family CD player in the living room. Me and my brother would show each other songs that came up on our YouTube feeds.

Moving out of grade school I was soaking up A Tribe Called Quest, Noname, Saba, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Chet Baker, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Nujabes, Kanye West, Sweet Trip, Kero Kero Bonito, MF DOOM, Jack Stauber… Then deeper into high school I think came the guitar music and songwriter-y stuff. Deerhunter, N.E.R.D, Lomelda, Mac DeMarco, Nick Drake, Bob Dylan, Eiafuawn, The Slaps... I think I had a good balance of digital and pre-digital age sounds, so there was little dismissal of the old stuff and little resistance to newer styles. I hope to present both.

And whose music inspires you now?
Right now it’s King Krule, John Roseboro, John Lennon, Tom Waits… I think today Tom Waits is my favourite artist, his album Bone Machine would’ve made my head explode as a kid. I’m getting my Beatles education fairly late in the scheme of things, but Revolver and Plastic Ono Band are so good they made me wanna quit and disappear before I finished the EP. These people have made music that reflects themselves and all that they’re into, and they do it real well.

As well as music, I believe you’re studying film at uni? Would you say that cinema also inspires your music-making? If so, in what way, and were there any films in particular that you drew inspiration from when writing the songs on Swans Today?
I was studying but I’m out now. TV and movies always made sense to me when my real world doesn’t, and I’m realising how hopeless that’s rendered wrapping my head round this life at all. I’m sure it shows up most in the types of lines I write, there’s cues from comedy dialogue, the melodramatic, all Hollywood high stakes and fatal flaws.

Punch-Drunk Love is in there, The Graduate is in there, Rocky, Magnolia, Hana-bi, Rushmore, Sunset Boulevard, Alice in Wonderland (1951)… The Muppet Movie (1979) is probably responsible for everything I’ve done since seeing it really young.

Your debut EP feels very cinematic, particularly in its use of abstract imagery, so I’d love to know more about your songwriting process, and how you take the seed of an idea as inspiration and turn it into a song like Shiner (The Cape)?
I think songwriting happens for me like collecting. If something comes to my head that’s funny, or strange, or percussive, or sing-songy, then I grab my notebook (my cellphone, the back of a receipt) and I write it down. I have to write it down. Most of it is bad and unhelpful. But then I can work backwards to figure out what it might mean or might say about myself, and that could inform what the next lines say. Most of the songs I have were written in tandem, growing in my head and often eating different parts of each other until they became their own. The first two stanzas of Shiner came at once and almost fully formed, but the rest cascaded over time.

When did you realise you had a knack for this particular style of songwriting and what was the process like for self-producing the EP?
I wrote a lot of poems in high school and they were always abstract, but they started reading more like these lyrics when I first began with Bob Dylan. I figured I sucked though. My poems scored really badly in English class. And hell I definitely sucked but it shut me down all the same. Still, when I started writing songs, I just wrote the kind of lines I always have and tried to stop caring if they were too opaque or specific to me alone. My favourite art doesn’t care about being too personal… I don’t know that I’ve realised a knack. Nothing comes easy all the time.

All the songs were finished on one instrument before anything else, but I’ll hear most of the other parts floating around already. When I’m producing I kinda brute force my way to plucking those parts out. I have to do a lot of singing and humming and beatboxing to identify the notes I’m looking for. Producing is the fun part, especially when it’s going well. I forget myself, I forget to eat. I stand up after a day sitting at my computer and immediately fall over.

Up until releasing the EP in late June, you’d previously received a lot of love online for Me vs. Mothra – what do you think it is about that song that captured people’s attention? And how has the response been so far to the full EP?
I’m really truly very grateful, every day. I made Mothra in large part to prove to myself that I could, and I was lucky enough to do good by a whole load of people with it. I think the great thing about something personal and sincere is that not everyone’s a fan but the people who enjoy it really enjoy it. The response to Swans Today has been dope – so many kind messages!! I still feel a lot of imposter syndrome but I’m proud of these songs and most folks are talking like I have the right to be.

What was it about the four songs on Swans Today that you felt warranted putting them out together as one body of work – is there something you feel connects them?
I think these songs string together real nice, real clockwise. They speak to a lot of self-loathing and insecurity. I’m lined with shame and I keep trying and failing to rip it out of my skin.

As well as the EP, you’ve recently been announced for both the Pitchfork London and Paris festivals, which is very exciting. What else can we expect as the second half of the year starts to unfurl?
I’m stoked! Rest of the year: more songs and more chances to hear them in person. In my head this EP is the first of a two-parter.

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Swans Today is out now; Paulie Swan plays Green Man Festival, Bannau Brycheiniog National Park, Wales, 20-23 Aug; Tenement Trail, Glasgow, 10 Oct; Neighourhood Weekender, Manchester, 17 Oct; Left Of the Dial, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 20-24 Oct; Pitchfork Festival, London, 4 Nov; Pitchfork Festival, Paris, France, 7 Nov

Follow Paulie Swan on Instagram @paulie.swan