Live Review: Swim Deep

This wasn’t my first time seeing Swim Deep in their hometown. It wasn’t even my first time seeing them at The Oobleck – the Brummy shoegazers had played the 400-capacity venue on its opening night just a year ago: a raucous, sweaty affair signalling good things to come. I had high hopes.

Walking into The Oobleck, the buzzing excitement of the atmosphere immediately hit me, with a room full of young teenage girls and a couple of parents stood at the back. Potentially the politest gig I’ve ever been to – there was an orderly queue for the bar! – there’s always something special in the air when a band comes back to their home town.

Support came from Leeds-based Vitamin, who bounded onto the stage with gallons of energy and a frontman looking not dissimilar from Swim Deep’s own. Sounding like a cross between Peace and The 1975 (fittingly, members of both were present at Swim Deep’s London gig the previous night), with a bit of Foster the People thrown in for good measure, I felt as though I should be rolling down my car windows in a summer breeze, not standing in a dark room in Digbeth in April. Dancey vibes and bouncy, sing-along choruses meant this was the perfect indie-pop to get the crowd joining in with the band’s sassy head-bopping in anticipation of the main event.

Gone are the classic indie-pop fashions of the past, and in come baggy slacks and smart button-down shirts

With a dramatic colour-changing graphic of their iconic wave logo projected for a good 10 minutes before stepping onstage, excitement was high when Swim Deep finally appeared, only to be shot down immediately as frontman Austin Williams announced that they’d only be playing nine songs. Leaping straight into new song ‘Fueiho Boogie’, they showed a distinct change of direction, with a much darker sound than you’d expect from the band who told us to “colour your days” on their debut album. Gone are the classic indie-pop fashions of the past, and in come baggy slacks and smart button-down shirts, with Williams boxing his way through the track and screaming at the crowd – who, of course, screamed right back. Stunning the crowd with a nine-minute running time, kaleidoscopic projections, and a swirling, clashing outro revealing their so-called new “psychedelic sex music”, Swim Deep really aren’t messing around anymore.

Bouncing back with ‘Honey’, the track which brought Swim Deep into the limelight, Williams seemed almost bored, barely singing whilst the crowd of teenage girls dutifully cried out “Don’t just dream in your sleep, it’s just lazy” back to him. For a band that usually dearly cherishes their homecoming crowd, it was disappointing feeling like they had almost given up on the songs their fans would have appreciated most. ‘Red Lips I Know’ followed, half-reinvented to fit with the trippier atmosphere of their new material, and nowhere near as floaty as it appeared on ‘Where The Heaven Are We’; everything feels that bit heavier and more dramatic than it did just a year ago.

Throwing out another couple of new tunes, ‘Namaste’ still sounds distinctly Swim Deep-y (but with horns!), whilst ‘One Great Song and I Could Change the World’ again brings the deeper tones of ‘Fueiho Boogie’, but this time with some groovy synth action bridging the gap from their dreamy debut album. Still, you can tell they’re “shaving their heads and going to war” with these tracks, trying to step out of their shoegaze vibes and into a more aggressive zone. And they’re most certainly succeeding.

They’re “shaving their heads and going to war” with these tracks, trying to step out of their shoegaze vibes and into a more aggressive zone

It’s at this point where Williams becomes seemingly nostalgic about his hometown, telling the crowd that the band are constantly asked what is so special about Birmingham at the moment; clearly referring to the deluge of Brummy indie bands currently climbing the ladder of the music world. Williams tells us it’s all down to the fans from this city building up their reputation – a position they found themselves in just a few years ago – before launching into ‘She Changes the Weather’, singing it as a love song to the city. The crowd totally lapped it up, with Williams taken aback by the sheer volume of voices singing back to him.

‘King City’ came next. A classic crowd-pleaser and Swim Deep’s first single, it was kept intact, with the band knowing not to touch something many of their fans would consider impossible to improve. And that’s exactly how it seemed – “Fuck your romance, I wanna pretend/That Jenny Lee Lindberg is my girlfriend” somehow echoed throughout this intimate venue, packed with bodies all straining to get the words out and be heard. It’s obvious that this track will always be a favourite for Swim Deep’s fans.

Closing the show with an encore of their latest single, ‘To My Brother’, it’s clear that Swim Deep are consciously looking towards the future, moving on from their sun-kissed debut album towards an acid house haze. They’ve described their second album as “a zero-gravity gospel record for the masses”; having heard this taster of Swim Deep’s journey into the unknown, I can’t wait to find out what that really means.