The guiding light of a good song: Swim Deep on the North Star of their new album
There’s this thing called ‘The Indie Landfill’; it’s where all the bands you loved at 16 went to die as you grew up and evolved beyond them. Some of them are still playing down there, vying for your attention with cookie-cutter remakes of their 2013 hits. For others, they’ve long since packed it in. But for Swim Deep, they escaped the curse of their generation and are firmly on solid ground, guided by the big star in the sky.
But they’ve peered over the edge. “You get reminded a lot that your biggest songs are some of the ones you made at your youngest, so you’re kind of like ‘oh, maybe I should do that again’, but it’s a trap,” Austin Williams, the band’s lead singer, said. While hoards of fans would still think of Swim Deep as the long-haired hair boys on Tumblr screens playing ‘Honey’ or ‘King City’, the band know that Swim Deep goes far beyond that.
After celebrating the ten-year anniversary of their debut album last year and marking the five-year anniversary of their current lineup, this new album feels like a band that has finally and fully grown into themselves. “We feel like this is actually Swim Deep,” bassist Cavan McCarthy said as the group appeared to have done the impossible, which is to be able to grow alongside their fans, keep evolving and escape the stifling hole so many of their peers fell into.
When it came to making the new album, they were joined by a collaborator who perhaps understands that challenge more than anyone: Bill Ryder-Jones. Having also first found success at a young age in an indie band, the old The Coral guitarist also escaped the trapping of that world to stretch out into a bigger career. “Bill said it quite a few times in the studio that maturing as a band or growing up as a band is something that’s quite hard to do,” James Balmont, their keys player, said, “But I think we all thought that was something we wanted to do or were dedicated to doing here. We wanted this album to be about how we’re feeling now and what we’re into. And we’re all a lot older than we were, or even than we felt on the other records.”
Because Swim Deep have come a long way from the kids the world met them as. For Williams especially, this album feels markedly different as it sees him move into a huge new chapter as a father. It’s a role that seems to seep into everything, from his lyricism to his wider thoughts on the position of the band in his life. “Sometimes I question whether we should have stopped after the second album so that the band could have been remembered as that, and then we could’ve come back easier as something different. But then that seems so unfair to what I feel like Swim Deep is,” he said. “Swim Deep doesn’t feel like me anymore. It feels like something I have to do right by or care for or represent or something. It feels like something we’ve got a duty to,” he explained. He described the band like a child, treating it as a creature he’s now trying to raise the right way.
When it comes to There’s a Big Star Outside, it feels like the band has given the record all the care, love and undivided attention that a child needs. “Interestingly, three of the four albums were made in the same studios as the one we’ve just done. So I think when you’re in the same space, you do become aware of how you’re doing things differently,” Balmont explained. “So when we made the second album, Mother’s, we just got completely obsessive about the synthesisers they had in the studio and got distracted playing with them, and that’s why that album was so kind of out there.” But for this album, they were focused and attentive to the task at hand, “On this one, we just had a couple of Mellotron keyboards, guitars we know we wanted to use and were playing to our strengths rather than going out on a completely tangent,” he continued.
So, with the motivation to evolve, the responsibility to do right by the band, and the wisdom of their producer to help keep them on course, the trick was simply to follow the light. As ‘Big Star’ emerged first, the song felt like some biblical guide taking them towards their most realised self and far away from the teetering edge of the landfill. Their North Star was nothing but pure and simple, good old-fashioned songwriting.
“It came back to Bill again, being a songwriter’s songwriter and wanting to take you to the core of the song rather than just dressing up in all like funny colours,” Balmont said, crediting the role of their producer in keeping them focussed. For Williams, the sessions felt like getting reacquainted with his own voice as Ryder-Jones seemed to give him permission. “It’s definitely the best I’ve felt presenting the lyrics to the band,” he said, claiming that the producer joined the “brotherhood” of the band, creating a supporting and encouraging atmosphere for his most outright soul-bearing in some time. “Everyone was knew what I was going through and knew what I was going to talk about, so writing the songs and sharing them felt like I was getting support, it felt like going to the pub with friends and talking everything out,” he said.
It’s an album that felt great to make, both through the emotional catharsis it offered and the less distracted process that saw them return to the basics. “Bill’s a big believer in the ‘Campfire Method’, that if something sounds good around a campfire on acoustic guitars, then you know its a good song,” Balmont said. That was the star to follow; “We kept coming back to the core of the song, the emotion of it. It was all about finding the song first, then going from there.”
It’s tough to imagine the Swim Deep we loved in 2013 around a campfire. But in 2024, the songs they made there more than trump the oldies. Centring the lyricism and crafting a beautiful nest for them out of twigs collected from all their past releases, including swirling synths and anthemic guitar lines, it’s understandable why There’s a Big Star Outside feels like a band grown and settled into itself, knowing that scenes come and go, years pass, but an honest, good song is a light that doesn’t go out, and that’s something to nurture.
