We all remember Swim Deep’s first album, ‘Where the Heaven are We‘ as a great first album for an Indie boyband starting out their career in the world of music right? Well those boys have now turned into men and with the added addition of James Balmont on the synths and keyboards that feature heavily on this album, they have now created something, well awesome was the word that came into my head when I took my first listen this morning, when listening to ‘Mothers‘.
We’ve already heard singles ‘To My Brother‘, ‘One Great Song…‘ and ‘Namaste‘, which personally shocked me on the first listen. When I first heard ‘To My Brother’, I was expecting nothing more than a guitar, bass, drums combo, similar to the tracks that featured on the first album. However I was stunned when the synths kicked in and had to check my screen to see if it really was Swim Deep playing! This was the introduction to their new sound. I could literally picture lead singer Austin Williams bouncing around the stage with big sunglasses & maracas just like Bez from the Happy Mondays (see BBC’s Reading & Leeds footage, as this is exactly what I pictured!)
The rest of the album has a similar feel to the songs we’ve already heard. Highlights include ‘Forever Spaceman’, which has a David Bowie ‘Life on mars‘ sound to it and ‘Grand Affection’ whose intro reminded me of an 80s arcade game’s music. Continuing with the 80’s theme is ‘Namaste’, which Austin recently told me ‘reminded so many people of an 80s game show theme’, hence their choice for that brilliant video that went with it!
Another highlight is 8 minute long ‘Fueiho Boogie‘. There’s some long album tracks that you dread as they can often be quite dull and off-putting, however this is something to look forward to, it will immediately make you want to stand up and dance forever. There’s also ‘Laniakea’ with the line, ‘All the brothers and the mothers and the lovers…’ being one that will soon be stuck in your head.
It’s very rare that a band achieves such greatness in a second album, most we shrug off as ‘alright’ whilst longing for a repeat of their first, but this is something that won’t be forgotten and pushed aside. This is the future.
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