Jewish band’s new album evokes the haunting of the past
By Gabriela Geselowitz for Tablet Magazine
The Sway Machinery is back with their latest album, Purity and Danger, and we’re premiering the music video for their new song, “My Angel’s House.”
The Sway Machinery is the project of Jeremiah Lockwood, musician and grandson of the legendary cantor Jacob Konigsberg. The band’s genre is hard to pinpoint, as it incorporates everything from rock to blues, to traditional Ashkenazi music.
“This new record, I would say that there’s a strong recurring theme having to do with ghosts,” Lockwood told me. “Ghosts are a collaborative element in creativity, and they’re not really to be afraid of—and they’re part of the band, so to speak—they’re members of the wedding.”
“My Angel’s House,” one of the two English songs on the new album, certainly fits that category. The eerie release, directed by Tatiana McCabe, is a departure from the band’s music video for “My Dead Lover’s Wedding.” In the new video, Lockwood sings about his love, interspersed predominantly with images of trains and the art of Amadeo Modigliani (also Jewish). Lockwood explained that the video may tell the story of a lover who’s dead, literally or metaphorically, and the distance that creates. Taking the train poses its own sort of danger.
“Here’s the collapsing of the train story with something that’s impossible to obtain, and there’s the fear of violence,” Lockwood said. There’s an “incredible familiarity and other-worldliness.”
Here’s the video:
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