We are one of the 365 best new bands of 2007!
Swimmer One are today’s Guardian band of the day. Previous inhabitants of this illustrious slot include 1990s, The View, The Twang, Amy Macdonald and Calvin Harris, so that bodes well. Admittedly there are a few other Guardian bands of the day who we’ve never heard of, but still. We thank you, Mr Lester.
Stewart Lee’s Edinburgh Fringe show this year is called Stewart Lee: 41st Best Stand-Up Ever (after an honour bestowed on him by a Channel 4 poll in March this year). We should have T shirts made: ‘Swimmer One - one of the 365 best new bands of 2007.’
Anyway, here’s what Paul wrote, in case you can’t get the link to work…
Swimmer One are an electronic pop duo from Scotland, although guitars aren’t a no-no, in actuality if not in principle. They give intelligence a good name and are more windswept than worthy. Words are important to them, in the way that they once were and could be again to Morrissey and McAloon, Tennant and Cocker. Visitors to their website will have realised that they’ve Got Ideas, and things to say about love and life. They rail against rockism, celebrity culture and the hypocrisy of pop charity. They worry about the state of the world and the noises that trains make. They know about Mondrian paintings and shortwave radio. They are deeply concerned, but amused as always. But they are mainly here today because their music has the quirky intricacy of Belle & Sebastian and the soaring atmosphere of Blue Nile, and it is very, very good.
They’ve been described variously as “sounding like the Divine Comedy dabbling with mellow techno”, “the missing link between Pulp and the Chemical Brothers” and “Berlin-era Bowie being tied up under the stairs of a sex shop with the seedy electro of Soft Cell”. Mostly, Swimmer One (and, yes, fans have been known to turn up at gigs wearing goggles, if not gogs wearing giggles) get compared to Pulp and Pet Shop Boys, although there have been references to Associates, that 80s electronic pop duo from Dundee who made Sulk, one of the greatest albums of the 20th century, before frontman Billy Mackenzie committed suicide in 1997. We mean it as a compliment when we say that neither member of Swimmer One is likely to commit suicide. They make “heartbreaking, euphoric pop” in a small attic room on the Scottish coastline, but it is more meditative than unhinged. Their debut album, The Regional Variations, will be released on September 3, the anniversary of the day Hitler invaded Poland and World War II broke out. We mean it as a compliment when we say that neither member of Swimmer One is likely to invade Poland.
Hamish Brown (not the photographer who used to be in shoegazing also-rans Revolver) has written music for films about Samuel Beckett and Scottish Ballet and recorded the score for an existential clown show about cannibalism and polar exploration. Andrew Eaton (not the film producer chum of Michael Winterbottom) has written music for a cabaret act, a play and a short film. They have performed in the UK and Italy with the theatre company Highway Diner, and made a series of short films with the artist Daniel Warren, which have been screened at film festivals in Cannes, Naples, Chicago, Zurich and Edinburgh. Their songs have titles like Whatever You Do, Don’t Go in the Basement and The Fakester Genocide. The lyrics to But My Heart Is Broken talk about the death of punk and the dearth of depth: “a plastic matrix of cartoon people who talk loud but don’t say anything… TV clowns in fuck-me heels…” They are not gay, even if Andrew has been called “the feyest man ever to have a girlfriend”. The title of The Regional Variations is “an attempt to describe the fascinating differences between people - cultural, racial, political and sexual - and the complicated reasons why certain people are drawn together”. They are unlikely to go drinking with Noel and Liam, but you never know.
