Navigated Like the Swans

For his first album under the Young Moon moniker, San Francisco’s Trevor Montgomery opens 2012’s Navigated Like the Swans with “The Crystal Text,” a shimmering instrumental indie pop song that glimmers like a sunset on the ocean off the Barbary Coast. Through watery reverb, Montgomery plays melodic lines on his electric guitar over a simple rhythm section, letting his leads become his voice. He balances low and high octave singing parts in the following “Walk in White,” sounding like a sullen Sufjan Stevens. Then “Winds Light” plays like a brokenhearted dirge with a palpable pain the lyrics—especially at the end, when he sings “Tell me the light in your eyes is not gone.” There are moments throughout Navigated Like the Swans when Montgomery comes across like the brother of Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart, most noticeably in “A Reason.” It's the longest song here, at just more than five minutes; Montgomery sings in his lowest register, as if someone tracked the vocals from a hospital bed just as he was waking up after a surgical procedure.