"Swamp" by Mike Mains & the Branches [Content Warning: Discussion of Suicide], Thursday, March 30, 2023 (repost)
Closing 2019's heart-wrenching When We Were in Love, "Swamp" perhaps sums up Mike Mains & the Branches' third album in a single song: love, depression, and religion. Like the songs "Breathing Underwater" and "Around the Corner," Mike Mains gave an intimate insight into his writing process on Labeled. Mains talked about earlier Tooth & Nail releases from mewithoutYou and As Cities Burn, which helped to inspire him to write darker Christian songs and push the genre of Christian Rock lyrically to open an honest conversation about mental health, depression, and questioning one's faith.
YOU HAD ME AT MERLOT. "Swamp" is the conclusion and the title-bearer of the album. Mike Mains asks his wife, bandmate Shannon Briggs Bolanowski-Mains, "Do you remember when we were in love?" On the Labeled podcast interview, Mains talks about "Swamp" being about a fear that his wife were to leave him. Mains wrote "Swamp" after spending time in therapy and in couple's counseling, when things were starting to pick up. The first line from the song was what his wife wrote on a Valentine's card. While things seem to be getting better, Mains imagines that all the progress the couple made was for naught, and Shannon becomes fed up with him and leaves anyway. In this dark fantasy, after leaving Mike, Shannon finds a man who is everything that Mike is not: a fearless, strong Christian who satisfies her every need. Continuing the narrative Mains talks about in "Breathing Underwater," "Swamp" sees the singer graphically imagining his suicide by "pull[ing] the garage door shut and let[ting] the engine run."
DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN WE WERE IN LOVE? Speaking directly about "Swamp" in the interview, Mains quotes the song "Poison Oak" by Bright Eyes: "I'm drunk as hell on a piano bench/ And when I press the keys, it all gets reversed /The sound of loneliness makes me happier." Mains says, "I wish it wasn't, but it's so true, but I love sad songs and they do make me really happy because they remind me that I'm not alone." Interestingly, "Swamp" subverts the Christian art trope of writing a song in a minor key but ending on a major chord. "Swamp" ends with the lines: "Every day feels like waking up in the swamp/ Every day feels like waking up at the bottom." Not only does the song end with that line and the sad, wandering piano, but the album ends with that line. Mains could have ended the album with "Around the Corner," a song that could put the grief in a positive context, but instead, "Swamp" is a song about processing the grief and it's our realization that we are not alone when a day just flat out sucks. Some days you don't want to be told that everything is going to be okay. And that's okay. Also, mental health is not always as simple as illness and recovery. And that's not a spiritual illness, just reality. "Swamp" ends the Christian Rock record we all needed back in the '90s, but wasn't released until 2019. Better late than never.
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