Jim White and Marisa Anderson: Swallowtail

Not a month goes by without Jim White’s name cropping up on a new release. Following his excellent debut solo album, All Hits: Memories, and the impending release of the Dirty Three’s first album in 12 years, Love Changes Everything, as well as White’s new band, Beings (also featuring Steve Gunn), the Australian drummer returns alongside experimental guitarist Marisa Anderson for their second long-player, Swallowtail.

Like White, Anderson is constantly collaborating, and 2024 has been no different – the Portland-based artist appearing on Tara Jane O’Neil’s A Cool Cloud of Okayness and BIG|BRAVE’s A Chaos of Flowers. It’s these collaborations with artists from different creative orbits that makes her alliance with White so unified. Both have spent an eternity shifting beyond the borders, and following their 2020 debut, The Quickening, Swallowtail sees White and Anderson continue at their free-flowing, dynamic best.

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It’s Anderson who takes the lead on Swallowtail, guiding White through the miasma of guitar reverb and warm drones. While creating a feel-good vibe alongside George Xylouris as Xylouris White and Guy Picciotto on All Hits Memories, Swallowtail sees the drumming maestro pivot slightly, finding space between Anderson’s lush arrangements to cause a new brand of hypnotic majesty from behind the kit.

On Aerie, Anderson’s plinks and drones hover above White’s fractured rhythms that roll out of the speakers like a thunderstorm. Anderson’s knotty, melodic guitars, the closest White has experienced to his Dirty Three bandmate, Mick Turner.

It sets things up for Swallowtail’s three-part centrepiece. On Bitterroot Valley Suite: Water, Anderson plays with a meandering finesse, creating something that is like fog drifting across open fields. White’s march-like drum patterns build with a friction where you feel as if the whole thing could come undone at any point. And while Bitterroot Valley Suite: Tree continues that tension, it’s the epic swell of Bitterroot Valley Suite: Wind that draws the mini-trilogy to a fascinating conclusion. A feral freakout that rivals Bill Orcutt and Chris Corsano’s Made Out of Sound.

The juxtaposition between calmness and chaos continues on penultimate track, Peregrine. Over 10 minutes, what begins with Anderson’s wandering guitar lines pulling at the same heart strings as the Dirty Three’s Ends of the Earth, the composition slowly morphs into a countryfied, sepia-toned dreamscape that feels like a score to Rich Ford’s Canada.

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That dream residue leaks into Aurora. A languid, cinematic voyage that draws from the influences both have obtained by the vast number of collaborations they’ve been involved with over the years. Including their own. Aurora showcases the catch-and-release tension that sometimes comes with improvisation. A protracted interplay that eventually finds that moment of magic.

And that’s what Swallowtail is. A result of two master’s at work, White and Anderson unveil something deeply alluring in what is one of the finest works either have produced.

Swallowtail is out now via Thrill Jockey. Purchase from Bandcamp.