In this interview feature, we get to know the most radicalist up and coming stars on the planet.  

This time we caught up with coastal roaming quintet (and TMR favourites), Swimming Tapes.

Lost in the unseasonably balmy spell the UK enjoyed a few weeks back, we found the mind went wandering; wandering past the here-and-now to wistfully revisit the bleached memories of yesteryear, and then on to the glistening summer plans soon to be realised. It was in this hazy reverie of bittersweet nostalgia and keen optimism that we received the felicitous news of Swimming Tapes’ debut record, Morningside, and it couldn’t have come at a more opportune moment.

Save for a brief UK tour and the release of sepia-toned stand-alone single ‘Easy Strand’, Swimming Tapes spent most of 2018 holed up in an East London studio working on their forthcoming debut LP, with a little help from producer and long-time collaborator Paddy Baird. The new record builds on the simple sincerity and dreamy languor of such shimmering cuts as ‘Set The Fire’ and ‘Queen’s Parade’ but imbues them with a warmer and notably richer sound. The London-based dream-poppers have been vocal fans of both Wilco and Real Estate for some time, so it’s entirely fitting that Morningside was actually mixed at Wilco’s Chicago studio (The Loft) by Tom Schick.

Speaking of Morningside’s lead single ‘Pyrenees’, the band call it “a sweet little bop of a pop song. It might only clock in at two and a half minutes but we still managed to get two different guitar solos in there. The song’s about what follows an argument with a loved one, that middle of the night feeling when you realise actually you’re the one in the wrong.” From this perspective, ‘Pyrenees’ could be said to represent the album as a whole, typified as it is by swooning harmonies and sparkling guitarwork, but coloured with an enduring melancholy that both intrigues and disarms.

Last year we were treated to the band’s ‘10 Songs About Swimming’ playlist and even had them play our stage at The Great Escape, so on the release of the new lyric video for ‘Pyrenees’, we thought it was about time we caught up with the band to hear how this wonderfully reflective new record came to be.

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TMR: Hey guys, thanks for talking to us. Of course, your debut album Morningside is soon to be released, how are you feeling about it?

Andrew Evans: We are feeling really excited. Maybe a little bit terrified. I think, as a band, singles and EPs are obviously what gets you noticed to begin with but you don’t become “a proper band” - whatever that means - until you’ve released an album. In the streaming age maybe that’s not an opinion held quite as much anymore, but for us it’s certainly still true. It’s something we’ve been looking forward to for three years! It's a bit of a moment for sure.

TMR: If you can narrow it down to one, which song are you most proud of and why?

AE: That's a very hard question, but for me a track called ‘Out Of Line’ sticks out a song I am very very pleased we have on the album. It's a song where pretty much the whole way through Louis and Robbie are singing together, a bit like an old song of ours ‘Queen's Parade’, and to me that's a really lovely sound. Maybe even something we don't do enough of. To me ‘Out Of Line’ seems like a bit of a bellweather track for the album. It's got a little element of everything from the record condensed down into one song. This will probably curse it and everyone will hate it now haha, but it's a personal favourite of mine.

TMR: We’ve only heard EPs and stand-alone singles from you in the past. How did the process of working on this full-length album differ from previous Swimming Tapes projects?

AE: Every single song we’ve ever written has been written with some sort of blueprint, and we have always written with a very clear idea of what we want to sound like. But having said that, the first two EPs are pretty much a product of circumstance. They were the only songs we had ready to record when we needed to record some songs at the respective times. What’s been really exciting for us is that the album has been the first time we’ve written a collection of songs very deliberately to be exactly that: a collection. It meant we could do things and explore areas that we definitely didn’t have time or space to do before. It felt like our canvas suddenly doubled in size.



TMR: While warm and dreamy, Morningside has a bittersweet current running throughout that’s perhaps more pronounced than on previous releases. Would you agree? Were there subjects or ideas you felt free to explore on this record that you couldn’t in the past?

Louis Price: Yeah, I think we went down a couple of new lyrical routes on this record. ‘Bittersweet’ is quite a nice way of describing it. A lot of the songs have similar themes as on our previous releases but there’s a few more personal ones on there for sure. I would never say that we ‘couldn’t’ write about them in the past, we’ve always felt free to write about whatever we want. I just think we wanted to explore a couple of new avenues this time. Also, a lot of the time Robbie and I write the lyrics together whereas this time we wrote a few of them separately so naturally came out with some more personal stuff. It’s not too crazy though, don’t worry. We’re saving the medieval concept album for a few years.

TMR: We’d say there’s been a notable shift in production value. These new songs feel much richer. Why the change and how did you achieve this new sound?

AE: It’s not like we listen back to those first EPs and really cringe at the production, but in the three years since we released ‘Souvenirs’ we have spent more time in the studio and figured out a lot more about our sound and learned a lot more about how to achieve it. We recorded with our good friend Paddy Baird in London again, and were very lucky to have Tom Schick on board to mix it in Chicago. Both of them did an incredible job. Tom has worked on some of our favourite albums and was such a pleasure to work with. Him and Paddy did a great job of making the instruments just sounding really pure, without much fuss. In the early days we captured that ‘dreamyness’ by whacking a load of reverb on it but I think PB and Tom had the skill and gave us the confidence to achieve that slightly languid, dreamy sound more through tones and how it’s all mixed and put together, rather than just throwing reverb at the final mix. Everything sounds a little bit more in focus than the first few EPs, but in some ways it sounds even more laid back and dreamy than ever.

TMR: One of our favourite tracks on the record is ‘Mirador’, how did this particular track come about?

Robbie Reid: I had the idea for the verse chord progression and melody but was just singing made up words and had no chorus. When I played it to the guys they were nodding and started playing along, pretty soon we had the chorus and bones of a tune. I really like the drums in this track, they weren’t what I initially imagined but when Andrew started playing like that it felt like we were doing something a bit different from previous songs. The idea for the name and lyrics came from a holiday in Lisbon with my girlfriend; we had an amazing time and kept talking about how great it would be to just stay there forever. It’s a very beautiful place with a lot of hills, and on these hills they have viewpoints called ‘miradouros’, or mirador if you’re reading an English guidebook. I liked the idea that mirador sounded like mirror and that they’re places where people pause for reflection. Lou and I wrote the lyrics together, I remember at one point him looking at a picture of Lisbon and saying, “pastel shades” and that became a lyric.



TMR: You’ve said before that recent single ‘Easy Strand’ was recorded alongside many of the tracks on Morningside but ultimately didn’t sit right in the context of the album. Why did you feel that was the case? Further to that point, what was it about this collection of tracks that felt right?

AE: Yeah it was recorded in the same session and originally was going to be on the record. It will come as a shock to no-one that as an indie band in 2019, we didn’t have lots of money, so we recorded and mixed the album really quickly. When we had finished it all and we had a bit of time to sit back and re-listen, I think ‘Easy Strand’ stuck out just a little as the one song that could have benefited from a bit more time. It wasn’t sitting quite right but we liked the song, so we tweaked the mix a little and gave it its own little moment in the sun. We were happy with that too as it meant the album became that little bit shorter and clocked in under 40 mins. Short records are good records. Usually.

TMR: Despite changing subject matter, production styles, tempos and so on, your music has always had a languid, laid-back quality. To be honest, it’s not a sound that’s particularly prevalent in the London guitar scene at the moment. Where do you think your attraction to this sound finds its roots?

AE: I think it's a mixture of a few things. A lot of our influences, especially in terms of current bands or artists, are from the US rather than UK, or more specifically London. That's not to say we don't like any UK bands, but if we think of our UK influences you're talking more about 80s and 90s stuff from Manchester and Glasgow than a load of stuff that's around at the moment. Music from the States tends to be a bit more spacious and widescreen and the UK perhaps a bit more angular and claustrophobic. We are definitely more drawn to the former which is very much at odds with the pace of life in London. Four of us are from Northern Ireland and three of us grew up right by the sea there, so maybe the wide horizons and open spaces there have seeped in to the melting pot too.

TMR: In addition to the short and sweet pop songs you’re known for, Morningside also features a couple of unexpected, extended instrumental passages (specifically on ‘Say It Isn’t So’). How did this track develop into its current form?

AE: ‘Say It Isn't So’ is the anomaly, in that I'm pretty sure it’s the only Swimming Tapes song to come from a jam. We never do that. Pretty much all our songs are written in one of our bedrooms and worked on quite extensively before we play it in the rehearsal room. But ‘Say It Isn't So’ has a bit of a jam as an extended intro that originated as a spontaneous thing at a practice session while everyone was getting warmed up. On a four track EP we'd have probably felt doing that would have been a bit self-indulgent, so one of the nice things about making a record is that you feel you have the time and space to do that and the listener will come along with you. We really love it when records have little instrumental tracks or passages and it’s something we've been doing at live shows since our first ever gig.



TMR: Despite Morningside being your debut LP, you’ve released a number of EPs and toured a fair bit. What’s been the best or most memorable Swimming Tapes experience so far?

AE: There have been quite a few little moments along the way. A gig in Brighton that we played at Green Door Store was the first time we went outside of our 'hometown' and played to a room full of people that had come to see us that wasn't an audience padded out by friends and family. The crowd were so good and I remember us getting off stage and sort of being very happy but also a bit confused, like "what just happened?!". Working with a bit of a hero of ours in Tom on the record and him being so complimentary about it was also really great for us. Those two things are definitely two moments or periods of time that stick out.

TMR: The Swimming Tapes project has always felt remarkably streamlined, like you’re all very much on the same page. Is there a Swimming Tapes vision? If so, how would you describe it?

AE: I think we are all, generally, on the same page. We are very much all on board with what a Swimming Tapes song should sound like. But I think there is also a realisation that you do have different opinions and that is what makes the project interesting. There is discussion and disagreement along the way. Definitely. The music would probably be quite dull if there wasn’t. Whilst we all agree on the big picture stuff, discussions on how we get there and the place the music ends up in because of those differences in opinion is what makes your music unique and interesting.

TMR: As a new band breaking through, are there any other up-and-coming artists or bands you’re really enjoying lately?

AE: We are really huge fans of a Leeds band called Celestial Green. We played with them in Leeds in November and they are really really good and great guys too. Yakima, another band we played with but in Glasgow. They have really nice songs. We are playing with a band called Blackaby in April who we also love. Check them out.

TMR: What does the rest of 2019 hold for you guys?

AE: Well, we are on tour in April, then the album comes out in May. We're hoping to get out there and play as many festivals as we can over the summer, and then another bunch of shows in the UK in the Autumn / Winter. We're also hoping to get some more new music out there as we've been working on some new songs since the album got finished. Who knows when you'll be hearing them, but I would like to think it will be later this year.



Morningside is slated for release on 24^th May via Hand In Hive and be sure to catch Swimming Tapes on their upcoming UK tour as well.

-Karl Jawara