Pufferfish Rides the Swell

The cover of Swell

​It's been about three years since Pufferfish put out its full-length debut album, Hello Zero. In that time, the band's added a backing vocalist, Emiko Blalock, as well as local songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and Ball of Wax gatekeeper Levi Fuller. Swell, the band's self-released sophomore effort, is the first album that features the band's current line-up.

After listening to Swell incessantly since it came into my possession 24 hours ago, I've come to the conclusion that it is worth picking up, and not just because it contains one of the best country songs I've heard come from a Seattle artist this year, "Wrecking Ball." It was KEXP's Song of the Day a few weeks ago, and I highly encourage you to go download it right now, because it is definitely the shining gem of the whole record: It begins softly, with Baker and Blalock singing together not quite completely in sync, then opens up into a cheery, mid-tempo accordion melody. I'm also partial to "Little King," a slightly more lively track that features some impressive bluegrass fingerpicking (Frontman Jonah Baker is also quite a guitarist).

Though it'd be misleading to say that the whole record is as stunning as "Wrecking Ball" and "Little King", what's interesting about these guys is that they are neither overly derivative, nor wanting for some kind of stylistic identity. There's no mistaking Pufferfish's music for anything but alt-country, and yet, you can catch accents of other, completely unrelated stuff: the ambient distortion that closes out "Point Blank, Texas," the eerie alien-flick echoes that introduce "Dogs," or the heavy, no-questioning-it rock flavor of some of the album's most prominent guitar parts. This is obviously a collection of musicians with diverse interests who've come together in the service of country music, which explains the pleasantly unorthodox results. It'd be a shame for this record's existence to get lost amidst all of our holiday preparations, and if you're going to be around, you might think about heading to the Tractor Tavern on December 26; Pufferfish is performing that night along with Star Anna and the Laughing Dogs and Kristen Ward.