ANDY SWAN PLAYS SOUNDSCAPES (572 COLLEGE) NOV 13, 8pm.
Andy Swan is a man of many names — Detective Kalita, The Michael Parks and, uh, Andy Swan — but he’s always done one thing very well: toe the lines between tender-hearted vulnerability, self-deprecating wit and barely concealed contempt, kind of like Will Oldham stripped of the inscrutability (and the scary beard). Though he calls Toronto home, with Ottawa, Swan pays tribute to the city that houses his label and many of his best friends — including Jim Bryson, Andrew Vincent, The Acorn’s Rolf Klausener and Kelp Records head Jon Barlett — all of whom join in to transform Swan’s solitary serenades into spirited group hoedowns. As such, the torn ’n’ frayed indie-rock that defined Swan’s past work has been displaced by a more rustic presentation that provides suitably stark settings for his stories of dead Rolling Stones, starfuckers and the loneliness of living in the city: “you and your lawyers in your penthouse apartments / and me in my one-room shack,” he sings to an ex who’s since traded up, “it’s a matter of fact how you got the diamonds / and I got the shaft.” But Ottawa is ultimately a testament to making the most of your limited means: when Swan asks “Can I Pay You in Sunshine?” — a finger-pickin’ charmer that sounds like it was lassoed in from The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo — you know that the man is good for it.