Swim Deep + Phoebe Wood
The evening opened with the wonderfully talented Phoebe Wood, evoking plenty of classic songwriter progressions. The energy was brilliant as Phoebe’s ethereal, voice rode with clarity alongside the surf-y guitars and percussive keys. It was nice to see a backing band, from just the name, it’d be easy to make the assumption it was a solo artist. The backing group really contributed with lifting the vocals and made the performance slicker. Armed with an orange mustang, she was engaging with both the music and on-stage chat. It was probably the best performance of the night. The young Mancunian outfit undoubtedly have some skills and could go somewhere with a bit more confidence.
Swim Deep are not a band that would be considered part of the canon of indie rock – they are present in a sense, but not really. Having been testing the boundary between pop and indie alongside The 1975, JAWS, and maybe even the Magic Gang, they have ended up not staying underground, but not making it big. The crowd was definitely on the more youthful end of the spectrum. They draw on genres but never really manage to make it their own. Echoes of the Stone Roses, Underworld, Blur, Devo and a mutltitude of other bands from that era are ever present but failed to reach full potential. Before heading into ‘Fueiho Boogie’ they announce ‘this next one is an 8-min rave banger’ – which really could’ve been, but the excitement was sapped by the cheesy lyrics and slightly mushy mid-range.
The NME coined them as part of the ‘B-Town’ scene, it’s a bit of a mess of a term, but some of the artists do have something in common, and that’s that they like to put on a good show, and it would be hard to argue that Swim Deep didn’t do that. They said that this was ‘the best show so far’, and it’s good they and most of their crowd had such a great time. The thinly-veiled threat that all great gigs have wasn’t there, but it’d have been uncharacteristic, so perhaps it wasn't all that bad.
