Austin Williams can make you walk on air. This is one thing that comes out of Birmingham five-piece Swim Deep‘s second album, as within the first moment of Mothers they’ve lifted you to a psychedelic plane thanks to that airy falsetto.
Before now, it’d have been easy to dismiss this lot in the same receptacle as Peace or The 1975 (God forbid), but with the help of producer Dreamtrak, Swim Deep have actually taken the pains to develop a new and more engaging sound than the standard UK indie. Of course, nudge-wink grandeur isn’t lost on them – opening with the fantastic One Great Song And I Could Change The World, their ambitions aren’t exactly slight. Their grasp of pop melody complements their new style, with To My Brother and Grand Affection…
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…being masterful strokes of hummable radio fodder. But that balance of the commercial with experimentation is what works about Mothers, even if sometimes the individual moments don’t. While they start to climb the lower rungs of a Tame Impala vibe on Is There Anybody Out There and Forever Spaceman, it becomes clear that they’re not afraid to take risks with their soundscape. As a result, more traditional moments like Namaste and Heavenly Moment seem a bit beneath them, but there’s more goodness here than most young bands can muster by this stage. Give them a chance – Swim Deep will take you so far under that you’ll begin to see stars.
1 ‘One Great Song And I Could Change The World ‘
2 ‘To My Brother’
3 ‘Green Conduit’
4 ‘Heavenly Moment’
5 ‘Namaste’
6 ‘Is There Anybody Out There’
7 ‘Forever Spaceman’
8 ‘Grand Affection’
9 ‘Imagination’
10 ‘Laniakea’
11 ‘Fuelho Boogie’