Swim Deep have come along way from playing in their local bars in Birmingham, recently just finishing their tour around various venSues in the UK. I managed to catch up with Austin, Higgy, Zach, and James before they played for the third time in Bristol, Trinity Centre.
You Album ‘Mothers’ has just come out, hows the reception been?
Really positive, great to play it live. You never know how people are going to react to your songs so its nice to see that people are enjoying it.
How would you say your sound has progressed from the first album to the second?
It’s better! All good things must change, its natural. Its a lot more visual, a lot more brave we have made a quite an unusual record. We’ve tried different structure, a lot of bands these days do pop singles ‘Chorus, verse, chorus’ where we haven’t done that.
Do each of you have specific roles?
Austin is lyrics. But it works, we all work off each other. It never happens where we don’t like something. Sometimes when things arent fully formed thats when we can all chip in.
Also in terms of instruments its all quite fluid how everyone swaps instruments and there is no restrictions. Even though in the live shows we have our own instruments in the studio we all play a bit of everything on some songs. We are picking up loads of this percussion stuff and seeing how that sounds.
Everyone who plays their instruments but their own style on it which makes it more varied.
Are you still fond of the first Album despite the fact the newer one is different?
We wouldn’t be here without the first Album, so in that sense yes. It’s all relative. We’re a band that loves to make music and we’ll carry on doing that so yeah we still love the album.
You still get associated with the ‘Birmingham’ scene?
It died! As soon as people started calling it a scene, it just isn’t one anymore.
Was it a big influence though?
The thing is about the Birmingham scene is that we were so enthusiastic to make music and to get out of there. Then three bands came out of that and that was it, that was the finish line.
Birmingham is one of the best places to play, its passionate crowd. Its got such a broad radar of music and every music has come through Birmingham and loads of cultures. A lot of peoples hopes and dreams of getting out of there.
There is still good bands out there also. Sunflower Lounge is one of the best venues to play.
How has the tour been so far?
Getting a lot of the songs ready to play live was really exciting and its been really good. Adapting our music from the studio to performing took time as we really wanted to do it justice.
Do you get a choice on the venues you play?
No we don’t, but the venues do make a massive different! I really like the Trinity venue that we are playing at tonight, we came here after dot to dot and saw our mates play which was awesome.
Have things all run smoothly?
No! We always have the worst luck. We lost our favourite football on the roof, flat tyre and our laptop broke! Other than that, its all great.
James has started taking drugs now as well, prescription though! Which he keeps losing. Left his passport on the plane as well AND lost his luggage!
HANNAH RYAN 