Swim Deep - Namaste

There’s trying something new, and then there’s ‘Namaste’, the only proof required that Swim Deep are taking a gigantic leap of faith with second album ‘Mothers’.

Since the start of this year, talk’s centred around the Birmingham band trying something new with LP2. In February, frontman Austin Williams said: “I feel like we’re all shaving our heads and going to war with this record.” That was around the period of ‘To My Brother’, a psych-led swarm of invention. An undeniable switch from ‘Where the Heaven Are We’, it was still hard to believe, at the time, that Williams wasn’t overdoing the rhetoric.

What’s emerged since then has given credence to Williams’ bolshy talk. ‘One Great Song and I Could Change the World’ is probably the most palatable of new moves, but it’s still clearly from the same wired, wacked-out recording sessions. The same goes for ‘Grand Affection’, a hook-led glimpse into the unknown that took guts to produce.

‘Namaste’ is in another league, though. Beginning with a synth line lifted straight from a parallel universe Wheel of Fortune episode, it closes with a mad scientist shriek from Williams and an attention-swerving guitar solo. Bonkers. Beyond that, actually. It’s either career suicide or a stroke of genius. When all the madness from the past few months falls into place with ‘Mothers’, you suspect Swim Deep are going to be onto a winner.