This Bitter Earth

Veronica Swift’s second album for Mack Avenue is an eclectic, unforgettable delight, with the singer’s out-and-out virtuosity perfectly matched by a band that can take the music in any direction... — Jazzwise, March 2021, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 9th Apr 2021
Catalogue No: MAC1177LP
Label: Mack Avenue

Jazzwise

Editor's Choice

March 2021
Presto Recording of the Week

19th March 2021
Presto Recordings of the Year

Finalist 2021

1 This Bitter Earth

2 How Lovely to Be a Woman

3 You've Got to Be Carefully Taught

4 Getting to Know You

5 The Man I Love

6 You're the Dangerous Type

7 Trust In Me

8 He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)

9 As Long as He Needs Me

10 Everybody Has the Right to Be Wrong

11 Prisoner of Love

12 The Sports Page

13 Sing

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Recording of the Week, Veronica Swift - This Bitter Earth

19th March 2021

Vocalist Veronica Swift's second record with Mack Avenue tackles some much wider-spread themes such as sexism, racism and misinformation on her excellent follow-up to 2019's Confessions.

Whereas Veronica Swift’s 2019 Mack Avenue Records debut, Confessions, contained songs that played out like pages from her personal diary, on the captivating follow-up, This Bitter Earth, she flips by crafting an ingenious song cycle that tackles sexism ('How Lovely to Be a Woman'), domestic abuse ('He Hit Me'), environmental issues, racism, xenophobia ('You Have To Be Carefully Taught'), and the dangers of fake news ('The Sports Page'). The singer-songwriter gathered material that covers multiple genres, including jazz, American musicals, and contemporary indie-rock fortifying her position as a leading force in genre-bending song presentation.

“I want this album have two separate approaches,” states Swift. "I wanted to start with women’s place in society now and how it's changing. During the second half, I wanted to address other ailments in the world, whether it’s racism or fake news. But I don’t take any political stances. I’m very clear with my audience that as an artist I just want to address certain issues as an outsider looking in.”

Reviews

March 2021

Veronica Swift’s second album for Mack Avenue is an eclectic, unforgettable delight, with the singer’s out-and-out virtuosity perfectly matched by a band that can take the music in any direction they please.

April 2021

Veronica Swift is a woman of many voices, and she uses every one of them to refract a dizzying kaleidoscope of moods on This Bitter Earth, the follow-up to 2019’s Confessions. As on that earlier work, Swift digs deep into the American songbook to reveal new, often surprising truths.

19th March 2021

Her latest recording is undoubtedly more serious than Confessions, Swift’s much heavier choice of lyrical content also reflected in some of the less personal subject matters; her versions of ‘You Have to Be Carefully Taught’ (from South Pacific) and Dave Frishberg’s ‘The Sports Page’ shining a light on racism and fake news respectively, topics just as pertinent nowadays as when both of these tunes were originally written in the 50s and 70s.

This Bitter Earth

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Recording of the Week, Veronica Swift - This Bitter Earth

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This Bitter Earth

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