Swim Deep

So the other day I went to a gig to see Swim Deep. I've already told you all about the support band JAWS, so lets now focus on the headliners themselves.
Well they're brilliant, Swim Deep along with Peace are the bands who've out Birmingham back on the map.

Musically Swim Deep play a chilled out version of the B-Town Sound, at times they're incredibly mellow and melodic (The Sea) on other songs they can be brooding and dark such as on 'King City' -a song that is petty much the perfect soundtrack to Birmingham on a rainy day.

The gig started by the rhythm section of the band stepping on stage, and playing a continuous bassline for about a minute or so before Austin (he's the singer) came on with a batch of flowers and handed them out to the crowd. This guy clearly came from the Morrissey School of frontmanship. If you've seen any of their videos before you may have sen them as a bunch of scruffy lads in vintage clothing with bad haircuts,  yet live in their hometown, the band look, sound and are treated like rockstars, even the hair looks cool.

The few songs they did play (remember they only have 2 singles out at the time of writing) completely  engaged with the audience, 'Honey' and 'The Sea' were treated like old favorites. Even the B-sides sounded good. By the end of the gig Austin was shirtless and we were waiting for them to play 'King City', though there was a few minutes of faffing about and one song which might actually have been an extended jam, but when they played 'King City' it was worth the wait. The gig wasn't what I'd call particularly mental but it was fun and the songs work really well, the band's sound is quite murky and that's a bit how you feel when you leave their gigs, i mean this in a good way (I'm not very good at describing some things)

And then once the band had left the stage to applause, immediately after the sweaty -16-18 year old's danced to an old 80's pop song on the wet floor. I'm 20 years old and i was with a guy i knew who was older than me and two other guys I'd just met who were the same age. we were just standing there and It would have been weird to join in. I suddenly felt very old,  it was a bit awkward.



Image from http://www.facebook.com/SWIMDEEPUK