Squirrel Flower - I Was Born Swimming

The first thing that hits you with ‘I Was Born Swimming’ is the brutally honest nature of it all. There’s an overriding sense that this is going to be a wholesome, riveting and warm record from the opening guitar notes of ‘I-80’. Hunches have a habit of being right. Squirrel Flower’s debut very much feels like a commentary or a dialogue rather than anything overtly preconceived. The gentle guitars perfectly tee up each song and its overall ambience, and ‘Red Shoulder’ packs a beautiful, leafy and autumnal style along the lines of Kurt Vile, Phoebe Bridgers, or Snail Mail. There’s a real sense of space, Squirrel Flower already showing herself to be an artist comfortable in her own skin. They aren’t all hushed ballads though, the instrumentation even verges on grungy at times, but make no mistake, there’s an absolute flow here. An accomplished first full-length.