SWIMM

Dear SWIMM,

Excuse my indulgence but I’m feeling as though a preface is necessary in this letter to you. So here is the preface SWIMM. My dick hasn’t been hard since before Nü metal gave shirtless cock-rock a platform to pirate a once glorified stage of bravado and turn anything with a little meat and potatoes into a creatine shake. My proverbial pendulum hasn’t approached high noon in so long that I’ve considered leaving my job as the lead music journalist at Vegan Sprong. But just as I approached accepting that this industry is as hollowed out as its collective nasal cavity… I stumbled upon hope in the form of a misspelled oasis in thin font. What I’m getting at is this. Through the twists and turns of objectifying the subjective and hocking my own daily projections onto someone’s precious musing whilst transmogrifying my opinions into printed fact I stumbled upon something that made it matter again. It was SWIMM. And well Hallelujah is right, cause guys… I think it moved a little.

SWIMM is a band. Though truly it feels as though I’m slighting you to define it so irreverently. Sure… the semantics. It is a group of guys playing indie music. Genres, directions and influence oh my. The way I see it? You don’t blur genre lines as much as you weave in and around them. Like a dancer trained in the art of the pole, you wrap yourself around every angle of that steel, climbing to exhilarating heights, effortlessly spinning off in exciting directions but still poised and comfortable in the intimacy of an eye-locking ass-clap. Again… even thinking about it… It moved a little. The ambition to strive for a singular voice and sincerity in music is often the ‘unapproachable model sitting alone smoking a menthol at the bar blankly staring above her glass of sherry’. So the mirabilia in you finding that is not lost on me. But to this there is that and to that there is this! An innate humor that often detracts the listener from ever taking you too seriously. Well let’s say more seriously than you would ever want. And in that my SWIMM friends the truth you are tapping into does not beg for recognition nor does it parry those listeners with phlegmatic constitution. Cause let’s face it, apathy has near and far replaced ‘easy listening’.

In your new single “Man’s Man” you relay the hilarity of a cliche Los Angeles artist type molding sincerity in heartbreak through conjured New Age justifications. You sing “horoscopes for answers please, a whore before but now I see my actions don’t define me. // I’m existential ego free, waiting for the feels to leave// still I’d rather hear you cry and than to hear you say you love me.”

Your writing process. Well I find it reflects the corybantic nature of our fast food society and well… how else could we all relate? In one moment a plea with reality and a bargain with aspirations and in another the possibility that all the secrets of the universe are tied up in the banal observations we may be too preoccupied to ruminate upon.

Take “Beverly Hells”, the title track of your last EP and the first sign that you were willing to go a little deeper. In one sense a satirical rant on the absurdity of Hollywood. In another sense, a love song simply pining for the genuine to reveal itself.

But what would these words be than just someone’s drunk uncle slurring his ethos in late night text messages without a marriage of palpable sonic elements. Palpable in the way your brain gets chills and softly vibrates much like an underwater eel garden when clean MDMA introduces itself to your senses. (Or so I’ve heard) Or the way your whole body feels a chord when just the right amount of psilocybin is ingested. (Also, i’ve heard) Perhaps SWIMM, you knew you must create the world in which these lyrics live, in just the right way to express the sentiments they speak to your easily detracted, Ritalin generation.

But here is the clincher for me. Let’s see. How can I explain this. Ok, every once in a while I want to forget our technological advances and the jejune twinkling of Apple laptop music and swing my cock (again, proverbial) around like a freshman named Max or Cooper, who wears tie-dye with unapologetic naiveté and doesn’t fear the capricious pathways of the subconscious that can be opened by LSD. Pardon but can someone just fuck me up a little? Well SWIMM you do that for me too. Cause boys, even though you will only grow softer in your quarter life crisis… much like my metaphorical member, I can tell it is within you to need that same release. And sooner or later, after Cookie gets his fill of slowly dry humping the audience’s ears via his crush velvet whispers he too will reach for his balls (must I reiterate at this point?). He will kick a pedal and lose his shit and we will all get the kick in the dick we’ve been waiting for.

Correct me if I’m wrong but the sound of distorted guitars and live drums is still a thing right? In some remote corner of the music world? Well when I walked into their warehouse in downtown LA, aptly named The Cube, and the entire place was transformed into a sexedelic space hub of wild abandonment, I started to believe again. Adam whipped his curly locks to and fro whilst pounding those drums and well you could color me convinced. Forgive me now if my musical latissimus dorsi are bulging like Henry Rollins without his shirt on but why does testosterone in music have to feel so barbaric? And to that, why does the term singer/songwriter make me want to barf sparkles and kleenex drenched in unrequited tears. Oh Ritalin Generation!!! I ask you! Must we choose? Must we either gaze or rock? Must we either sway or shimmy? Must we either make love or fuck? Must we choose? SWIMM I feel I don’t need to choose with you. And for that, from the bottom of my “not flaccid, not yet a hard cock” I thank you.

-Donni Leiberman,
Vegan Sprong