Mark Schwaber

To Mark Schwaber, the art of distilling beauty from desolation is a familiar one.

The sonic expression of his sincere relationship with darkness binds together the many albums that he has recorded over the last several years. His most recent work, Everything Around Me, continues this journey. Written in the months leading up to and after his mother’s passing, the album captures a devastating epoch in Schwaber’s life.

“I ended up recording everything revolving around the death of my mom. While things aren’t directly relevant at all times with all the songs, I thought that lyrically they lent themselves to the subject matter. The process was at home, it was all alone, it was completely singular, really private…it was dealing with grief.”

The entirety of the record was engineered, performed, and produced by Schwaber in his own home, and indeed what results is a work that feels not unlike a bedroom. Intimate moments pulled from Schwaber’s past surface throughout the album: memories that gained potency during this tragic period in his life. Synths and programmed drums color the songs, a nostalgic nod to an 80’s childhood. Dear friends offer their presences in the form of field recordings, phone messages, a knock on the door, etc. Instrumental interludes allow Schwaber’s lyrics to rest, and invite the listener to experience what cannot be put into words. The result is a lush portrait of grief - a dark and private world brought to light.

In Murder/Suicide, Schwaber articulates one such world with turbulent elegance. The arrangement brims with instruments that shimmer and spark alongside Schwabers candor as he speaks to a therapist about his depression. One feels as if they are dropped into the middle of an on-going conversation with little hope for resolution. “I guess I’m not good at life,” Schwaber resigns after referring to an impulse towards murder/suicide and drawing an oblique connection between himself and John Wayne Gacy. “I thought it was actually pretty funny,” Schwaber says of the song, “Darkly funny, and at the same time very sad. I think that depression gets that word used around it incorrectly all the time. Sadness has very little to do with depression in my experience, but I think that having to have these kinds of thoughts at all is kind of a sad thing.”

Still, these moments of intensity are temporary, bookended by a helpless uncertainty that makes the conversation feel all too human. The song ends where it begins, as Schwaber repeats the claim, “I don’t know why I’m alive”. It is clear the question will be asked and unsatisfied in cycles, and to some comfort, this, at least, becomes an immutable truth.

Over the past 20 years, Schwaber has released over 7 studio albums, including those released under the monikers ‘Hospital’ and ‘Home’. He plays every instrument on his most recent work, Everything Around Me, which was self-engineered and self-produced in his home. In the past, he has worked closely with Lou Barlow (Sebadoh, Dinosaur Jr), Fred Maher (Lou Reed), Joan Wasser, Matthew Sweet, Lloyd Cole, Shadows Fall, and Mary Lou Lord.