Swim School - Making Sense Of It All

Edinburgh four-piece swim school certainly entertain dreams of grandeur. Opting for a combined force of sparse, anticipating verses and rousing choruses, their sound has clear footholds in both the stirring indie of Wolf Alice and Cheatahs’ driving shoegaze. So far, so good. Yet debut EP ‘Making Sense Of It All’ never feels to fully attain the sonic heights of either. On ‘Outside’, the band perform a diluted version of fulsome, defining emotions, a track buoyed by its bright melodies, yet still hampered by an unshakeable sense that they’re only just getting out of first gear. ‘Everything You Wanted’, despite targeting the dramatic weight of, say, Wolf Alice’s ‘The Last Man On Earth’ lands closer to a bad date, its thudding drums and synths not enhancing an enveloping, hypnotic experience, but rather one lacking imagination or nuance. The EP does fizz and crack with lead single ‘Anyway’, on which the band manage to punctuate their distorted veneer with their best melodies yet, but for the most part, after the early promise of the group, it wasn’t hard to have expectations of just a bit more.