| Swim School | |
| Landscape: | yes |
| Origin: | Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Years Active: | 2019–present |
| Label: | LAB Records[1] |
| Current Members: |
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| Past Members: |
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Swim School (stylised in lowercase) are a Scottish three-piece indie rock band. Formed in Edinburgh in late 2018, the band initially comprised Alice Johnson and Lewis Bunting, before Bunting's schoolmate Matt Mitchell and their friend Nairn Milne joined the band. Mitchell and Milne later left the band, with Billy McMahon joining in June 2020. They have released the EPs Volume 1, Making Sense of It All, as well as Duality, and released their debut mixtape in April 2024, Seeing It Now.
Swim School were formed in late 2018;[2] Alice Johnson and Lewis Bunting met through their shared music course in college, on which Johnson was the only woman studying guitar during her first year. Johnson told Bodega Social Club in May 2020 that she and Bunting had been a member of "a few" bands as part of their course, and that these bands had played cover versions. Bunting later introduced Johnson to Matt Mitchell, who knew him from school;[3] Bunting and Mitchell had previously been in bands,[4] including one together. Nairn Milne later joined the band, who knew Bunting and Mitchell through a friend.[5] The band's debut single, "Sway", was released in February 2019,[6] with a second single, "Take You There", released the following June.[7]
Their debut performance was in Galashiels, took place in March 2019, and was a support slot for Indigo Velvet, another Edinburgh-based band. Johnson told the Alloa Advertiser in October 2020 that their set had been marred by a "40-something stranger" heckling sexist abuse at Johnson before and during the performance, prompting her to struggle to hold back tears while performing and to break down after leaving.[8] Swim School spent around a year gigging; the COVID-19 pandemic caused the band to concentrate on writing. They met up again after the first lockdown, and invited Indigo Velvet's guitarist Billy McMahon along; after a period of him assisting with live streams, he was invited to join the band properly in June 2020.
The band released an EP, Volume 1, in 2021,[9] and then the single "Let Me Inside Your Head" that March. They then released the single "Outside" in May 2021, the first song they recorded without Milne,[10] and which was written about cutting toxic people out of their lives.[11] The following month, they released "Anyway" and announced their second EP, Making Sense of It All, which comprised tracks about Johnson's mental state over lockdown,[12] and was released in August 2021.[13] [14] After releasing Making Sense of It All, Swim School spent a period gigging.[15]
Swim School became a three-piece in November 2022.[16] That month, they released the single "Kill You",[17] which Johnson had written the previous February about being comfortable enough in a relationship to show quirks. In February 2023, they announced their second EP Duality, which had been recorded at Narcissus Studios in London and produced by Iain Berryman, and took its title from the fact that it comprised love songs and angry songs; they also released "Delirious", which Johnson had written in a fit of rage after suffering from constant misogyny from sound engineers during festival season.[18] A further single, "Don't Leave Me Behind", was released in April 2023,[19] with Duality released in June 2023.[20]
Two weeks after Duality was released, the band re-released that album's track "Bored", a more positive derivative of "Delirious"; explaining their unusual release strategy to Metal, the band attributed the practice to wanting to surprise their fans.[21] In November 2023, Swim School and Nieve Ella supported Inhaler on their Cuts & Bruises tour.[22] A further Swim School single, "Give Me A Reason Why", was released in January 2024,[23] and later that month the band announced their "Seeing It Now" tour in April and May 2024,[24] followed by the release of their debut mixtape, Seeing It Now, featuring a cover of Pixies' "Where Is My Mind" and a new version of their earlier track "See Red",[25] with physical copies also sporting a cover of their earlier track "Anyway".[26]
The band used a May 2020 interview with Bodega Social Club in Nottingham to cite Jaws, Wolf Alice, Pale Waves, and Palace as influences, a May 2021 Clout interview question of their "biggest influences" to mention Foals, Wolf Alice, The Cure, Slowdive, Ben Howard, Boards of Canada, and Paolo Nutini, and a January 2024 interview with The Skinny to cite My Bloody Valentine, the Smashing Pumpkins and Slowdive. Johnson used the last of these to state that she had idolised Taylor Swift and Beyoncé growing up, and described the pair as "two very strong and powerful women who never let men hold them back or tell them what to do".[27] In May 2021,[28] the band performed a cover version of Swift's "Love Story" for a BBC live session after deciding to incorporate a cover into the set and rummaging through some Spotify playlists, with Johnson having been inspired by a grungy take on Bon Iver she had seen on Triple J; the following month, Andy Von Pip of Under the Radar noted that their rendition "turned a sweet, romantic optimistic pop song into a heavy dystopian doom rocker".
Johnson additionally noted in a 2021 interview with Dork that Wolf Alice's lead singer Ellie Rowsell was her inspiration for being in a band, with Swim School using the interview to describe themselves as a "Tesco Value" version of that band,[29] and Bunting used an August 2021 interview with Guitar.com to note that he was a big Metallica fan growing up and wanted to be the band's James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett.[30] Writing in July 2021, NME described the band's works as indie pop, while Mala Mortensa of Alternative Press described "Let Me Inside Your Head"'s vibe as "expect[able] from a Halsey-fronted version of Nirvana"[31] and Skiddle described Johnson's vocals in January 2024 as having a "Hayley Williams-esque delivery".[32]
| Volume 1 |
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|---|---|---|
| Making Sense Of It All |
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| Duality |
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| Title | Year | Album | Video director(s) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Sway" | 2019 | Volume 1 | ||
| "Take You There" | ||||
| "Let Me Inside Your Head" | 2021 | Making Sense Of It All | ||
| "Outside" | ||||
| "Anyway" | ||||
| "Kill You" | 2022 | Duality | ||
| "Delirious" | 2023 | |||
| "Don't Leave Me Behind" | ||||
| "Bored" | Rory Barnes | [36] | ||
| "Give Me A Reason Why" | 2024 | Seeing It Now | ||
| "To Grow" | Liam Beazley | [37] |