Barry Can't Swim on his meteoric rise, headlining All Points East Festival, and incoming second album 'Loner' • Cover Feature • DIY Magazine

Behind Josh Mainnie on the Zoom call is a glimpse of the Mexican sunshine beaming through the window of his posh hotel room. Josh – aka Barry Can’t Swim – has just landed in the country for a couple of shows but he’s not on until 11pm, so he’s looking forward to “a bit of exploring time, that’s been carved out beforehand”. He’s also booked a week’s holiday there immediately after the gig to enjoy with his partner before embarking on a run of shows across the US. “I can’t complain, man, life’s good!” he beams.

He’s an extremely affable interviewee, frequently at pains to acknowledge his luck. There are not many artists who go from performing their first live show to an afternoon set on Glastonbury’s Park Stage (so popular that the entire arena had to be walled off to contain the crowds), to selling out three consecutive nights at Brixton Academy, and booking a headline set at All Points East, all within the space of two years.

“It’s just been pretty nuts, to be honest! I keep having to remind myself how recently it all was,” says Josh. He recalls a story he told on stage during one of those colossal Brixton dates, about his first meeting with now-label Ninja Tune. “They asked, ‘What’s the long-term goal?’ I said, ‘Headlining Brixton in 10 years’ time would be a dream.’ Then, within a couple of years we’d done three [nights in a row].” Even that first ever live set, in May 2023 at Islington Assembly Hall in London, marked an outstripping of expectations, he points out. “It was initially meant to be in Hoxton Hall, which is at most 400 capacity, and my agent was a bit like, ‘I don’t know if we’re gonna sell out this first show.’ I got cold feet as it approached, because it’s a lot of money you have to front. But then it sold out, so we upgraded. Nobody knew that was going to happen, least of all me.”

The chance to get back in the studio on a label’s dime is a thrill in itself. “I still love that more than anything else,” Josh says. “There’s no better feeling than writing a piece of music that clicks. Just to have the freedom to write music is a crazy privilege.” Putting together the follow-up to his 2023 debut ‘When We Will Land?’ (which, befitting Josh’s seemingly endless well of good fortune, was a Mercury-shortlisted smash), also offered him a chance to take stock of a period that frequently tipped over into the all-out surreal.

“ “In order for me to process everything, I detached from what I was really doing.”

Cunningly scheduled for release in mid-July - peak festival season and a few weeks out from his All Points East headline show - it’d be natural to expect pure euphoria from album two, a victory lap for the overnight megastar to cement his status. It’s telling, however, that what emerges is something far more complex. There are, of course, plenty of bangers – the shimmering Kali Uchis-sampling ‘Still Riding’, the soaring energy of ‘Different’ that’s already an established live favourite – but so too does the record often deliver washes of melancholia, reflection, and even alienation.

It opens, for instance, with ‘The Person You’d Like To Be’, a jarring blast of sirens giving way to an edgy off-kilter melody and a brooding beat. “I wanted it to feel uneasy to listen to,” Josh says. It underpins a back-and-forth dialogue between his friend and spoken word artist Séamus that begins in a place of delusional hyper positivity: “You are an exceptional person, in some ways you are better than everyone else”. As Josh explains, “it’s a take on affirmations, which I think can actually be surprisingly toxic. It legitimises some kind of idea that there was something wrong in the first place.” Employing distorted, AI-enhanced vocal manipulation to up the uncanniness, the vibe shifts into paranoia (“Don’t look into someone’s eyes if you love them for too long / They will see you as you are”) and then total vulnerability (“Can you sit down with me for a moment please? / Can you hold my hand?”). It signals, Josh explains, the overriding themes that will continue across the record, of “isolation and loneliness. What better way to do that than with a fake voice that weaves between human and AI?”

If, as he says, “the album is completely an expression of my past year,” then it’s clear that that supersonic flight to stardom was not without turbulence. It’s titled ‘Loner’ after all. “If I’m honest, I’ve been a bit hesitant whether to just tell the truth about the album title,” he says frankly. “Because I just fucking hate it when people who have everything going for them say ‘my life is so hard’.” Nevertheless, he admits, “over the last year I started to feel quite distant from myself. In order for me to process everything and deal with the imposter syndrome that came with having to step onto a stage in front of loads of people, I detached from what I was really doing. Then, I ended up not really enjoying it as much as a result.

“It didn’t come in bursts, or in moments, like when you’re about to step onstage,” he continues. “It’s just kind of there, all the time, and this underlying feeling of fear, fear of the fact that it was going well but I didn’t have any control over it.” While he doesn’t take himself too seriously – the stage name Barry Can’t Swim is a long-standing in-joke, he likes to “take the piss when I’m on social media,” as he puts it – he’s also quite shy. “There are little things, like how I find it really hard to talk on stage. I could play the music all day, but those little moments where I have to talk to the crowd… I find them so hard.

“And a lot of it was not even just about shows or anything like that,” he continues. “It was just about coping with change, where that starts to define everything.” The detachment, he says, “was partly just holding onto the part of myself that was there before it all happened.” Again, Josh is at pains not to be seen as wallowing too much. “I’m so blessed, and all of this was self-imposed,” he adds hastily, but his self-effacement feels a little uncharitable; under such circumstances, anyone would be more than entitled to an identity crisis. In fact, it’s a minor miracle that he’s still so affable. “Part of the reason I’ve been able to deal with it is because I’ve got really good people around me – like my partner [who also runs Barry Can’t Swim’s social media], and my manager who’s a really good friend. I know so many artists who have been chewed up and spat out by the industry, and I’m so lucky that hasn’t happened to me.”

“ “I stopped thinking about anything other than what I wanted to make, and it just became fun.”

It’s telling that all of the features on ‘Loner’ are drawn from that close inner circle. Séamus, who reappears on the ambient interlude ‘Machine Noise For A Quiet Daydream’ following his role in the opener, is a friend from university. “He doesn’t even have anything online, but he’s just unbelievably talented and I think he’s brilliant. I’ve always wanted to work with him, even when we were just at uni.” Producer O’Flynn, meanwhile, who co-wrote meditative album highlight ‘Kimpton’, has been a close confidant since Josh’s first ever DJ set. “He’s one of the few producer friends that I would actually really call a mate, and I feel like we can just bounce off of each other.”

By contrast, big-name guests on the record are conspicuously absent. Given his status at the vanguard of a new wave of mainstream dance music, there has been pressure to up the star power, Josh notes. “Plenty of people on the industry side of things have tried to push me to work with X, Y and Z. I won’t name names, but people have reached out wanting to collaborate, but I just don’t really like doing that. Particularly with this album, I wanted to just do something that was really authentic and a true expression of how I felt, and getting big names doesn’t really do that, even if it might draw more eyes.” In addition, he says, “I’m at my most creative when I’m comfortable, and so if I’m with people that I know and trust and feel safe around, then I’m going to make the best thing that I can.”

Even the record’s artwork and visual direction is created in tandem with an old friend, Rory Dewar who he’s been working with since his very first self-released single. As with O’Flynn and Séamus, Josh points out, “I’m not just working with him because he’s a mate, he’s incredibly talented as well.”

That talent shows on the artwork in question, where on one side, Josh sits tucked away in a back room on the edge of an unmade bed, his eyes drawn to a slightly monstrous figure, draped head to toe in colourful rosettes that draw attention. It’s not hard to read into the uncomfortable dichotomy at ‘Loner’’s source: on one side is Josh, the shy and pensive human being who just wants to produce music, while on the other, we might guess, is Barry, the surreal beast that his music has forced him to become, weighed down – literally in this case – by the burden of success.

For what it’s worth, Josh is wary of offering too much in the way of direct explanations. “I think it’s more impactful to keep it open ended,” he says, but admits that it does speak directly to his aim on the record – to make peace between the two halves of a newfound split personality. He recalls a point early on in the process where he was struggling to do so, “feeling the pressure of living up to my own expectations, thinking too much about it,” which is when he got in touch with O’Flynn, who lived around the corner. “I wasn’t thinking about it in terms of using it to kick start an album, it was more ‘I’m going to write some music for fun,’” Josh says. “But then, I realised that, actually, that’s all this ever was. It’s just about trying to express something authentically and enjoy it.”

‘Kimpton’, the track they made that day, turned out to be an epiphany, a reminder, Josh continues, “that you can only really do what you want to do, and that that’s the most authentic thing. Everything just clicked into place. I stopped thinking about anything other than what I wanted to make, and it just became fun.” On the day he eventually delivered what he thought was the finished record, he felt a rush of liberation. “I went downstairs and wrote a song that literally came together in about two or three hours because I was just doing it for me.” He noticed that all of a sudden he was writing with the future in mind, the colossal summer shows, and that he was approaching them not with detachment but with ambition. “I had one eye on All Points East, and I thought to myself, ‘I need some bigger moments.’ And now, since I’ve been on tour, I’ve been writing more with a view to the show being bigger.” The song, the up-tempo roller ‘About To Begin’, was added to ‘Loner’ at the last minute, to stand as its new euphoric centrepiece.

It was the final piece of the puzzle, the final act of creative processing that sees Josh entering festival season if not transformed, then at peace with himself. “I think I’ll always be a little bit shy, that’s just who I am,” he says, “but I don’t feel like I’m putting any barriers up any more. I feel a lot more comfortable with this journey I’m on, a lot more positive and not trying to shy away from it all. I’m trying to recognise that this is all me, it’s Josh as much as it is Barry.”

‘Loner’ is out 11th July via Ninja Tune.

Barry Can’t Swim plays Rock Werchter (3rd - 6th July), NOS Alive (10th - 12th July) and All Points East (22nd August) where DIY is an official media partner. Tickets are on sale now. Visit diymag.com/festivals for more information.

Tags: Cover Features, Features, All Points East, Barry Can’t Swim, Festival Guide 2025