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SWIM DEEP

Swim Deep

Hum

Birmingham hailing quintet Swim Deep fifth studio album ‘Hum’. Lead single ‘Pieces Of You’ — is a defiant cut of alternative rock: roaring with clouds of distortion that bring a bite and rawness to its chiming melodies. Fresh and inspired from a sold-out tour across Thailand and China in December, and with an unexpected line-up change: ‘Hum’ is the work of a group rejuvenated, driven by their innate passion for music – even when the going gets tough – and sounding more confident than ever, whilst juggling the challenges of maintaining a grassroots indie band on their fifth album. Speaking on the track, lead singer Austin “Ozzy” Williams adds: “I had found a new writing partner at the full-time bar job: there stood J.J. Buchanan by the barrels of beer kegs we were hauling. A sharp songwriter and a soaring guitarist, who brought something fresh to this song and the whole sonic landscape that would shape ‘Hum’. Thematically, ‘Hum’ continues the life journey of ‘There’s A Big Star Outside’, which captured a transformational period for Williams – preparing for the arrival of his first child, but also the departure of his wife’s father. The songs on ‘Hum’ detail the aftermath of that spell, exploring loss, family and our responsibilities to those we build a life with. “I’ve now got someone to inspire,” he explains. “It’s like, ‘Yeah, your dad works at a bar to make rent, but this is what he actually does, this is what the dream is, and we’ll all live on it together. That’s the ethos on this album.” With ‘Hum’, Swim Deep turn struggle into momentum and personal upheaval into collective uplift. It’s the band’s heaviest, most adventurous, and most uplifting album in years – and the sound of a band still chasing the dream with conviction, but now with something deeper at stake." 

TRACK LISTING

1. Pieces Of You
2. You Me And Mary
3. I Keep Her Photograph With Me
4. Broken
5. The Throw
6. Such A Fool
7. Mud
8. ⁠⁠Is There Something Going On
9. In Dreams Alive
10. Lift Me Up

Swim Deep

There's A Big Star Outside

If one thing is clear from the offset of revelatory fourth album ‘There’s A Big Star Outside...’, it’s that Swim Deep is no longer the same band you’ve always known.

In some ways, Swim Deep’s fourth album – full of acoustic guitars and floral notes courtesy of a Mellotron keyboard (one of the finest musical exports from their native Birmingham) – has no business being as luscious and evolved as it is. But ‘There’s A Big Star Outside...’ could only have surfaced as a result of such testing years. It takes the youthful dreaming of their debut, and the excitable experimentalism of its follow-ups, and leads it to a more assured space, aided hugely by the input of producer Bill Ryder-Jones, who became a mentor throughout the journey. “A lot of the album, Bill’s drawn out of me,” Ozzy nods. “That sense of boldness and not hiding behind the music that he’s instilled in me has really made the album flourish, and be what I want it to be. It’s a cliché to say, but I feel I’ve been writing towards this record my whole life.”

It’s fitting that this is the message Swim Deep have arrived at, because ‘There’s A Big Star Outside...’ genuinely does feel like a golden moment for the band. Across more than a decade in the industry, they’ve revelled in the highs and weathered the lows – but their fourth feels like an album that exists outside of all that. It’s one that’s less about chasing the next rungs of success and more about really nailing their flag to the mast as artists, as adults, and as a group who were always in it for more than just fleeting scenes and early buzz.


TRACK LISTING

1. How Many Love Songs Have Died In Vegas?
2. Very Heaven
3. These Words
4. Robin
5. Don't Make Me A Stranger
6. First Song
7. Big Star
8. It's Just Sun In Your Eyes
9. So Long, So Far (Marble-Bellied Baby)
10. Fire Surrounds


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