Swim Deep are the latest band to emerge from Birmingham’s B-Town scene, a close-knit community of baggy revivalists that’s also spawned Peace.
The band’s debut, Where the Heaven Are We, gained them comparisons with The Stone Roses but ultimately failed to convince. Last night, though, as headliners of this NME Awards Show, Swim Deep came of age.
Their leader is Austin Williams, a man with the voice of Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie and the waistband of Jarvis Cocker. Beside him, the other members were a sea of long hair, flares and oversized shirts.
A student-heavy crowd showing little regard for the following morning’s 9am lecture were pogoing from the off.
The swirling pop of Francisco was the middle ground between Primal Scream and the Lightning Seeds; Honey was filled with echo-laden guitar and the arms-aloft refrain: “Don’t just dream in your sleep/It’s just lazy.”
When the pace slowed, the mind wandered. Stray and Soul Trippin’ were limp and vapid, musical flotsam floating on pop’s vast ocean, while Williams needs to work on his between-song banter. “This is a new song — it’s pretty good, I reckon,” he ventured, unconvincingly, on a hitherto unpaired ditty that was, indeed, pretty good.
Still, a cover of Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun was as inspired as it was inexplicable and when Williams popped open the champagne during the encore, the party was complete.
By last night’s reckoning, Swim Deep won’t be washed up on the shore any time soon.
