Composer Ethan Gold attends the 2018 Hollywood Music in Media Awards. (Photo: MaxTheTrax)

Performer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Ethan Gold shares his latest collaboration with independent film director and twin brother Ari Gold, resulting in the soundtrack behind the jazz-inspired drama, The Song of Sway Lake. Title tracks from the album feature vocals from American singer John Grant and English indie folk trio The Staves. The original soundtrack is released digitally by Lakeshore Records and is currently available for purchase on major digital platforms. The album is available on CD through Gold’s label Electrik Gold, which will also release a limited 7-inch vinyl on Record Store Day, Friday, Nov. 23.

The soundtrack album opens with two versions of the title song: the “Lost Record Version,” sung by Grant and arranged as a late ’30s  crooner track on vinyl, and the Big Band Version sung by The Staves as a late ’40s pop hit. This is followed by the film’s romantic and ethereal instrumental score, played in sequence. After an intermission of Haitian jazz, listeners are treated to “Sketches of Sway” — a collection Gold’s otherworldly finales, alternate arrangements, and sound experiments inspired by the themes of the film. The final two tracks return the listener to the title song, with two demo versions sung by Ethan Gold.

A story of the fading of jazz-age American music royalty, The Song of Sway Lake tells of the last summer of the Sway family on the lake that bears their name. The musically-inspired drama follows the travels of Ollie Sway (Rory Culkin) and his Russian drifter friend, Nikolai (Robert Sheehan) to the fictional Sway Lake. The film also features Mary Beth Peil as the matriarch, narration by Brian Dennehy, and Elizabeth Peña in her last role prior to her death.

“The two young men in the film, and the grandmother, have all replaced the grief they don’t know how to feel with a burdensome nostalgia,” Ethan describes. “The instrumental score itself is like a higher perspective for the lost characters. It’s the silent water of the lake, the ghosts of the father and grandfather, and the dark energy of the forest.”

“Scent and music are the strongest triggers of human memory,” explains director Ari Gold. “And because you can’t smell a movie, I counted on the gifts of my twin brother Ethan, whose abilities I’ve called upon in prior films, to weave his brilliant music into this setting, and to catapult the audience through frozen time.”

Ethan Gold first stepped into public consciousness when he produced and arranged Elvis Perkins’ blog-hyped “Ash Wednesday.” In between moonlighting as bass player in his brother’s celebrity-driven folk party band, the Honey Brothers, and also in San Francisco literary rock project the Size Queens, Ethan scored his brother’s debut film, Adventures of Power.

Since then he released his debut art rock album Songs from A Toxic Apartment. While completing the score and songs for The Song of Sway Lake, Ethan released a pair of idiosyncratic albums in 2018 — Live Undead Bedroom Closet Covers and the naive-electronic Expanses (Teenage Synthstrumentals), through Electrik Gold.