Occasion for Song

A complex, even contradictory record, not just the Black Swans' best but one of the most incisive and moving mediations on life and the loss of it in recent memory.

Occasion for Song is remarkable in that it digs into all these different permutations of grief, from the sad to the funny to the strange, and in that way feels like a full statement, a completely realized letter to their lost friend and bandmate.

While many songwriters tuck their thoughts away in layers of allusion and metaphor, The Black Swans win here braving the misery head-on.

In recognizing this missing piece [violinist Noel Sayre] straight on, Occasion for Song may finally have found a way forward.

The Ohio-based band led by singer/songwriter Jerry DeCicca bears its share of melancholy and then some on their fifth album, but so do a million and one other indie bands, and none of them come anywere close to evoking the same sort of sad-sack super session [like one with Lee Hazlewood, Townes Van Zandt, Stuart Staples from Tindersticks, and Mickey Newbury].

There's nothing but clouds on Occasion for Song, but rather than uninviting it's eminently listenable; an unflinching, graceful, truthful exploration of how to go on living when you've lost a friend, of how to recognize a world that suddenly seems that much darker and less hopeful.