The English band needed only two weeks to record an album that embraces the electricity of shoegaze and the sobriety of acoustic textures.
For about fifteen years, since its birth in 2011 in Birmingham, Swim Deep has shifted its gaze with every release, exploring the tiniest corners of indie rock. Sometimes drawing from the pop you hum loudly on Emerald Classics (2019), for instance, other times allowing themselves more experimental passages on Mothers (2015). This time, the English band stays within the indie pop perimeter they sketched two years ago on There’s a Big Star Outside.
On Hum, the group refines its craft with tracks like Pieces of You. Other songs borrow from shoegaze (The Throw) or lean toward a rougher acoustic sound (Broken). A favorite is Lift Me Up, a subtle closer to this album, written in just two weeks, spent and breathless, inside the walls of the legendary ICP Studios in Brussels.
The difficulties of the DIY scene
Swim Deep has endured a few hardships. For the DIY scene, as exhilarating as it is, can be very ungrateful: financial difficulties strain relationships within the band, doors slam, you have to find a side job while keeping gaps for creation.
The arrival of a new guitarist, J.J. Buchanan, finally breathes new life into the writing of the band led by singer Austin Williams. On the album sleeve, it is from the rolling, green, gray and damp countryside of their native England that the now five members of Swim Deep raise a banner bearing their signature as a declaration of independence. And a victory.
Hum (Submarine Cat Records/Bigwax). Out on June 19.
