ZWERG’s playlist
Moncton, New Brunswick’s ZWERG takes pride in his peculiarity and strives to bring something different to the East coast music scene.
“My goal is to communicate love and acceptance of imperfection and eccentricity. I know I’ll never be asked to be part of Broken Social Scene,” ZWERG jokes. “But that’s okay.”
Never say never. ZWERG’s latest effort, Package Up My Soul, is his most accessible work to date and is bound to change the course of his career. But the road to this point was a bumpy one and the past is nowhere near as sweet as the future is.
“I felt like a joke.” ZWERG remembers of his not so distant past.
“I was too flamboyant for the East Coast scene, too stylistically schizophrenic to be marketable, too spiritual to be considered secular, too vulgar to be considered Christian, too produced for the indie scene and too overworked and heavily arranged to be catchy or digestible.”
The man may have slightly changed his tune, but ZWERG continues to wear his heart on one sleeve, his soul on the other, with his passion showing rough and raw around the edges.
Among ZWERG’s piano-driven numbers on Package Up My Soul, the title track stands out with its bold honesty.
“It was written at a time when I felt that people in the industry and a few people in my personal life were trying to change what I was,” he admits. “I just felt pushed into a corner.” Well, ZWERG pushed back and the result is this very personal EP of originals and covers.
“The covers I chose are also very cheeky, blunt and honest,” ZWERG says. Among the tracks on Package Up My Soul, ZWERG selected “Lonestar” and “All Time Low” from Emm Gryner’s repertoire and sings her praises.
“Emm is such a gifted songwriter. Her work has taught me so much about composing a strong pop song. About height and movement in a melody, and the impact that can have. ”
Here are five personal songs that have an impact on ZWERG.
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Marianne – Tori Amos
“This is my fave song of all time. The chords, the voicing, Phil Shenale’s lush strings, all riveting and intensely expressive. I had the good fortune of discussing the arrangement with Shenale himself, and he expressed similar ardor for the tune. Tori harkens back to her youth when a close friend died. This track takes me back in time as well, back to the summer of ’96 when I explored the forlorn, but hauntingly beautiful, Fundy Coast of southern New Brunswick. Nostalgic.”
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Mayonnaise – Smashing Pumpkins
“This one takes me back to Grade 11, spending March break at my grandparents’ in Connecticut. Gramp was still alive. Gen-X, post-grunge fashion and lifestyle was in full swing. I miss that time. It was really cheap to buy clothes! The piece demonstrates the impact of employing an almost classical style of dynamic in a rock song. Hushed arpeggiated chords are counterbalanced by then being played as heavily distorted power chords. It’s amazing that the noise does not jeopardize the mellifluousness of the song’s base intervallic motif. On the contrary, the heaviness really drives the somber feeling home. Passionate.”
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Joga – Bjork
“I like the unpredicted bar of 5 at the turnaround on the chorus of this otherwise common time song. I love the musical juxtaposition of combining classical-sounding strings with very modern, quantized beats (which themselves are samples from volcanoes, marking another fusion, that of nature with technology). This marriage of the old with the new is really inspiring. I love the statement it makes, about merging two things which are seemingly incompatible. I’m all about crossing barriers and experimentation in music. Unlikely collaborations and fusion of genres is what creates new styles of music. This type of musical statement parallels life with humans, union and harmony between people groups, the homogenizing of heterogeneity (Incidentally, the song is from the LP Homogenic). Concordant.”
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Brown Eyes – Red House Painters
“This gorgeous piece by Mark Kozelek reminds me of my best friend Nancy (even though her eyes look kinda greenish or yellowish too sometimes). She’s a model and a teacher in Toronto. The lyrics mention the pain the writer sees in those brown eyes. Nancy’s been through a lot in her life, and so have I. We keep no secrets from each other. We know everything, all the dirt, and yet we still think the world of each other. Similarly, Kozelek seems to know the truth, perhaps a reality that is imperfect and yet still beautiful. Knowing.”
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Am I Wry? No. – Mew
“Mew are musical genius Danes. They’ve released two versions of this song, and both are Dream Pop, Scandinavian Twee, Math Rock, Euro Indie, and Orchestral Power Pop all at once. You get it all with this song! Mew explores really complex or unusual time signatures, key changes, and accidentals in their stuff. I like how they could have had huge mainstream success in America, but opted to stay true to their avant-garde inclination and experimental tendencies. They show no signs of conforming for the sake of being popular. I’m a big fan of Jonas Bjerre’s falsetto which blurs the line between vocal gender… much akin to Jonsi’s (Sigur Ros). Progressive.”
Package Up My Soul is available now.
ZWERG tour dates:
July 15 – Miramichi, NB – WaterFord Green Canada’s Irish Festival
July 16 – Miramichi, NB – The Angler’s Reel (The Rodd Miramichi)
July 17 – Miramichi, NB – Miramichi Lakeview Hotel
July 29 – Summerside, PE – Loyalist Lakeview Resort
July 30 – Summerside, PE – Loyalist Lakeview Resort
August 5 – Summerside, PE – Loyalist Lakeview Resort
August 6 – Summerside, PE – Loyalist Lakeview Resort
August 12 – Miramichi, NB – Waterford Green
August 13 (4 p.m.) – Miramichi, NB – Miramichi Lakeview Hotel
August 13 (8 p.m.) – Miramichi, NB – The Angler’s Reel (The Rodd Miramichi)
August 21 – Moncton, NB – Riverfront Park
August 28 – Miramichi, NB – Miramichi Lakeview Hotel
September 13 – Miramichi, NB – Miramichi Lakeview Hotel
Posted by Marc Andrew
on Jul 6 2011. Filed under Celebrity Playlist.
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