The great cult soul singer Swamp Dogg is 75 years old, and he's still pushing his music out into strange new places. On his new album Love, Loss, And Auto-Tune, he teams up with Poliça and Gayngs producer Ryan Olson, experimenting with digital vocal effects and synthetic sounds. That experimentation led to great things on first single "I'll Pretend," a duet with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, and, well, it's still leading to great things.
Swamp Dogg once again works with Vernon on "Answer Me, My Love," a cover of the classic song popularized by Nat King Cole in 1954 and the second single we're hearing from the upcoming Love, Loss, And Auto-Tune. Vernon uses the Messina, the hardware-based vocoder rig developed by his engineer Chris Messina, to add his own distorted vocals, and sudden blasts of horns and warped electronics pull the song's classic R&B off into unexpected directions.
"'Answer Me, My Love' is what we call a 'money record' and since I need money, I recorded it," Swamp Dogg hilariously explains in a press release. "You can't go wrong with a Nat 'King' Cole hit! He never recorded a bad song and always got hits. I need to pay some bills." Amen, Swamp Dogg. Listen to his version of "Answer Me, My Love" below.
Love, Loss, And Auto-Tune is out 9/7 on Joyful Noise. Pre-order it here.
