Trumpeter Swan

Drew Patrizi, formerly of locals What Made Milwaukee Famous, left the comforting nest of Austin for New York around 2010, his first album as Trumpeter Swan following shortly thereafter. Four years on, with a beefed-up roster of homegrown expats on board, Patrizi's hatched the follow-up, and it's no ugly duckling, rich with supple, confident musicianship. "Don't Stop the Music" uses its subject as an allegory for relationships, and, like the bulk of The Magnitude of Now, plays out deceptively peppy, wrapping despair in sweet indie-pop. The title track evokes Radiohead without the clinical chilliness, a magnum opus of heartbreak that culminates in a crescendo of roiling keyboard, pensive guitar, and the singer's plaintive musings: "How many broken hearts must thaw for the seasons to change?" Patrizi's voice remains clear and appealing, lacking the affectations of a less confident singer. A Swan spreads its wings.
4 STARS / **** - Austin Chronicle

In 2010, after moving from Austin to NYC, What Made Milwaukee Famous founder Drew Patrizi reemerged with Trumpeter Swan, an acclaimed indie rock band with a whole new sound. Now, he and the gang are back with their sophomore effort, ‘The Magnitude of Now,’ and the music is just as urgent as the title.

On the new album, due out Sept. 17, Trumpeter Swan deliver songs with infectious melodies to suck you in and thoughtful, hopeful sentiments to keep you coming back for more. Case in point: today’s free MP3, ‘Nicole I’m Telling You.’ While the title might lead you to believe Patrizi is about to put the subject in her place, he actually offers a message of perseverance during times of trouble.

“‘Nicole’ touches on the challenge of wanting to offer support to someone very close who is struggling with life and faced with a difficult, personal decision,” Patrizi tells Diffuser.fm. “How do you stay both optimistic and realistic? How do you help them through while walking the emotional tightrope — not wanting to offer false hope or coming across as Pollyanna-ish, but still providing the strength and support for them to persevere?”

Patrizi accomplishes what he set out to achieve with Trumpeter Swan’s carefully calculated indie-pop. It’s optimistic yet grounded, never veering into overly sweet or naïve territory.

“I had the guitar riff initially and the loose structure for the song, and then often, as I do when songwriting, I recorded a simple demo of just the music and listen to it on repeat while walking around New York,” he adds. “The melodies and words just came — I immediately started pleading and encouraging this person in my head to ‘hang in there.’” - Diffuser.fm

Drew Patrizi, of the much-lauded indie outfit What Made Milwaukee Famous, has got a new project named Trumpeter Swan. WMMF is a jewel of the Austin rock dynasty, so Drew (sans the band) has got a tall order. And he knocks it back easily with genre-bending, finger-snapping alt-pop. In “Loose Lips,” the horns get lush, the county-line echo grows loud, and by the end, we’re grinning like fools, ‘cause this dude’s full of joy and we need some more of that. - RCRD LBL

Listen For The Clues is the self-released debut album from Trumpeter Swan, the solo project of Drew Patrizi, a founding member and multi-instrumentalist of Austin, TX indie band What Made Milwaukee Famous. And while there are certain shared characteristics between the two projects, Trumpeter Swan seems to be a more personal and focused effort. Not that there isn’t a similar variety of styles and genres at play here, because there is; it’s just that the music is performed with a little less experimentation and a little more concentrated effort at creating a flowing pop song.

But these aren’t typical pop songs either. With a page borrowed from The Shins’ jangly and melodic indie-pop and Aqueduct’s offbeat energy of sprightly keyboards, Patrizi and friends (including WMMF bandmates Jeremy Bruch, John Houston Farmer, Jason Davis and Michael Kingcaid, among others) create their own sound with diverse instrumental layers, creating artistically lush songs with a sense of fun and a gauzy atmosphere, while maintaining a somewhat lo-fi tone.

With a dreamy, topical psych-pop foundation, Listen For The Clues’ piano-based compositions contain enough quirky art-rock and catchy melodies to be mentioned in the same breath as the RIYLs listed below. They also contain enough varied instrumentation, delivered in short, simple and curious bits, to form sophisticated, bedroom-style indie-rock with clever hooks hiding like buried treasure waiting to be discovered after multiple spins. Whether it’s the bossa nova-like rhythms and heartfelt chorus on “Silent Film (Noir)”, the eerie synth washes and slinky bass line on “Eternal Pessimist”, the driving guitar bursts on opener “Loose Lips” and “Fool’s Parade” or the Of Montreal-sounding crafty psych-pop on “Early Midlife Crisis”, or the tasteful horn arrangements scattered throughout, this array of earthly accents emphasizes the warm tones at the heart of each track. On top of all that, the magnetic vocals have a way of bringing usually trite lyrics about love and relationships to life with a hint of dry sarcasm and an introspective sheen similar to Coldplay.

At it’s best, floating sound effects and spunky melodies are woven with peppy beats creating a theatrical mix of pop and rock that could be compared to Brian Eno’s early solo works (think Kings Lead Hat). At it’s worst, the dreamy and bubbly pop occasionally falls flat, but remains affable and entertaining enough to warm up to. Overall, though, Listen For The Clues is an album rich in addictive jingles and hidden hooks that sound both strange and familiar at the same time that warrants repeated plays and will reward the listener with many enjoyable spins.

Recommended If You Like (RIYL): What Made Milwaukee Famous, The Shins, Baxter Dury, Aqueduct, Of Montreal and Her Space Holiday - Adequacy.net

What’s the Deal: Trumpeter Swan is Drew Patrizi’s solo project, whom you might remember as a founding member of Austin’s What Made Milwaukee Famous. He took an album’s worth of material featuring local guest musicians like John Farmer and Jeremy Bruch of WMMF, Jason Chronis of Voxtrot and Matt Bricker of The Polyphonic Spree, recorded at Cacophony Recorders and engineered by Erik Wofford and Danny Reisch, and took off to Brooklyn where these 12 tracks later became Listen For The Clues, Patrizi’s self-released debut album.

Patrizi employs much of what he practiced in his time spent with the guys in WMMF on the new recording, conjuring some precious and melodic poppy indie tunes with the aid of piano, synth, even a little trumpet. Listen For The Clues has a more personal vibe than some of his previous work, which makes sense considering these are the tunes that have been rattling around in his head and passed through few filters other than his own.

The light additions of trumpet scattered throughout is tasteful and used sparingly, which allows you to really appreciate them when they arise in songs like the heavy harmonizing retro pop tune “Early Midlife Crisis” and the catchy rock stomper “Won’t Come Back.” Trumpeter Swan changes up things a little with tracks like “Acolyte,” which is a synth heavy, gloomy, stare-at-your-shoes type of dance pop number. “Silent Film (Noir)” has a dreamy vibe, like floating weightless in a tank surrounded by undersea creatures in video game graphics, and then swells with “la”s and “da”s sung out echoed off a mountain top. - Austinist.com

The Story So Far: After six years with Austin, Texas, mainstays What Made Milwaukee Famous, multi-instrumentalist Drew Patrizi adopted a "new musical skin" early this year in the form of his solo project Trumpeter Swan. "For years, I've had lots of songs and melodies jangling around in my head, waiting to be heard," he says. "I look at [the full-length] Listen for the Clues as just the start- step one of a new musical adventure."

Why You Should Know 'Em: With guest musicians including members of Voxtrot, the Lemurs, Polyphonic Spree, and WMMF, the debut from Trumpeter Swan is a diverse assembly of everything from melancholy and acoustic arrangements to blippy, '80s-style synth-pop to lush, horn-infused anthems. - Alternative Press

What Made Milwaukee Famous, aside from its cheeky name, is quietly recognized as one of the most notorious indie rock bands of the last decade to come from Austin, or anywhere for that matter. They toured with indie icons like the National, had placement on national television, and were regular and much anticipated faces on the summer festival circuit. Yet despite getting all the appropriate breaks, they still never have managed to gain significant traction. But with such a regal, indie pedigree, it makes sense that Drew Patrizi’s solo endeavor of his own stockpiled material from the last couple years — which has donned the name Trumpeter Swan — would take the power-pop, crank-the-stereo idioms that defined WMMF’s visceral and heartfelt rock to the next level. Patrizi, in his solo effort, has opted for chamber-pop and studio acrobatics to produce an emotive and lush record, comparable in emotional scope to any of his previous group’s pursuits.

Trumpeter Swan tends to wallow in a space where the songs’ many parts work in tandem to create a collage of sounds that have fierce allegiance a certain musical alignment — a saturation of particular tastes. This album was certainly written as an art foray, not just a collection of tunes or some toss-off release from a guy who used to be in What Made Milwaukee Famous. From the unabashed power pop of “Loose Lips” to the full-on post-punk bravado of “Fool’s Parade”, Patrizi has stamped each song with its own genre/influence identity, almost as if he’s operating vicariously through sounds and passages he’s accumulated before in his head. Listen for the Clues is rich in texture and color, lyrically grandiose, and so decidedly ambitious, it positions itself as an album that draws a line for critics, reviewers, listeners and fans.

Trumpeter Swan sings about heavy things: the impermanence of love, a world under siege by pessimism and a remembered youth running away with age. If “Loose Lips” opens up inappropriately lighthearted, then the weight kicks in with the 80s pop of “Acolyte”. “You’ve changed, they can’t define you/ but your past is all around you,” sings Patrizi, cheap synths and bass stutters in accompaniment. “Silent Film (Noir)” continues in the same vein, almost to a fault — plenty of schmaltz laid on in the final seconds of the song via a shapeless reinterpretation of the song’s melody on a lone piano. Another extended piano ditty, “New Lang Syne”, finds itself more appropriately placed for such heartfelt balladry near the end of the album. That kind pandering to emotional tugs can play detriment to an album if done without taste, but thankfully for Trumpeter Swan, Patrizi has plenty of it. He just needs to decide where to use it.

If the first half of the album catered more towards Patrizi’s darker intuitions, then things turn with the hopeful and symphonic “Early Midlife Crisis”. While the lyricism kind of echoes the same sentiments heard in Jimmy Eat World’s cheer-up-kid radio hit, “The Middle”, Swan’s subtle orchestration between chord shifts and melodic passages keeps the music as the driving force, allowing for some lenience. The lines in the chorus, as the liner notes claim, were adapted from the morose Stevie Smith poem, “Not Waving but Drowning”. B-side standout “Greenbelt” offers a cherished break from Patrizi’s relentless spilling of his guts in all of the tunes he’s written and kept to himself the last couple years, as it’s the most “indie” of the tracks on Clues. The beachy and shimmering guitars offer great sonic surrounding for Patrizi and vocalist Molly Coogan to spout off impressionist lines of riparian scenes: “The weeds are tangled tall and thin/the water’s deep, the water’s cold.”

Listen for the Clues is an enterprising album full of affect. Patrizi, or Trumpeter Swan, whatever you wish to call him, has managed to pack a lot into 12 songs, making it a little hard to digest at first, but after a few spins, tracks and themes start to stand out. What I can say is that this is certainly not another What Made Milwaukee Famous album. The songs operate on a conceptual level, the music striving to enhance the lyrical message and vice versa. Given that Patrizi aimed so high, falling a little bit short isn’t so bad. At times his ambition and attempts to make a rich and colorful album come off as flat extravagance, and other times, it seems entirely appropriate.
- AustinSound.com

Trumpeter Swan
‘Listen for the Clues’

Drew Patrizi penned the single best song Austin quartet What Made Milwaukee Famous ever played — the snappy melodic pop nugget “Selling Yourself Short,” the highlight off buoyant debut album “Trying Never to Catch Up.” So it’s no surprise that this solo debut from Patrizi — now migrated to Brooklyn, like all the cool kids — chugs along with impressive energy and variety. Opener “Loose Lips,” with its fetching dose of brass and hummable refrain, sounds like a continuation of What Made Milwaukee Famous at their most affecting. That holds just as true for the record’s other rock-derived outings, including the powerpop barrage of “Won’t Come Back” and “Fools Parade.”

But Patrizi’s also in full-on sonic experimentation mode on “Listen for the Clues,” making time for cascading synths on “Acolyte” and “Greenbelt,” slipping into piano balladry on closer “Forest Fire” and toying with heavy reverb on the spaced-out “Silent Film.” And he pulls it off thanks to an impressive array of local luminaries — from engineers Erik Wofford and Danny Reisch to players from Voxtrot, the Lemurs and the Polyphonic Spree. At 53 minutes, “Listen for the Clues” wanders just a bit too much, but the worst you can accuse Patrizi of is over-ambition — and even then, only barely. - Austin American-Statesman