Alt. rock foursome Swim Good, split between London & Surrey, have let loose their debut self-tilted EP to the masses off the back of a UK tour in support. There’s a lot of energy here, and the songwriting is solid. The fact that they sat on these tracks for a year before being convinced to release them makes you wonder what could have come had they spent that year writing as opposed to getting on with life!

It throws in lashings of Title Fight along with some Biffy Clyro-esque noisy, brash guitar work with vocals taking the lead from Panic At The Disco, and in tracks like ‘Hatchet’, then straightens its laces up for some good ol’ fashioned rock and roll riff/chord led work in ‘People Like You’. Musically the tracks are varied enough and lay down some character for the band. They certainly have their own sound, which is a little to the left of what you usually get out of bands in this corner of the musical world with counter rhythms, riffs off the beat and generally a more tech approach to this style of music.

Vocally the release is solid, if not a little repetitive at times. However, Ryan does a good job of keeping things different from the norm from the start. It doesn’t quite line up with a lot of vocal work thats out there in this scene and helps the tracks stand out. There’s some American influence in there, but the vocals aren’t heavily stylised. Double tracking works really well across the EP to fill it out alongside the guitar lines.

Overall, I like it. It’s different, it’s pulling in a lot of different influences to create something that is interesting to listen to and most importantly, not horrifically repetitive. Their approach to melody and rhythm marks out tracks against each other and doesn’t wear your ear out.

4/5

Swim Good EP by Swim Good is out now on Failure By Design Records.

Swim Good links: Facebook|Twitter

Words by Luke Crook (@paisleysoul)