Swim Team
Introducing Cincinnati, Ohio’s Swim Team; photographed here by Jesse Fox.
Cincinnati’s resident thrashers Swim Team are readying their self-titled cassette for Casey Weissbuch’s curated Infinity Cat Cassette Series available now (in batches limited to 350 lime green tapes), and we are proud to present the premiere following listen. Lead by the energetic, enthusiastic, & sometimes angry Lillian Currens; get ready for a nonstop thrill ride that clocks in under the 30 minute mark and features all the real, visceral raw audio aggression that we need more of 2016. Lillian takes a no-holds-barred/no-prisoners approach that doesn’t mind breaking the fourth wall to castigate or chastise those deserving of being taken down a few pegs from their pathetic and/or petty pedestals. This is the cassette for anyone & everyone who has ever felt like it’s them against all the bastards of the world.
But Swim Team will not be pigeon holed on account of their rage, & righteous rowdiness alone. “Dirty Work” turns the tables on tyrants with some of the most infectious riffs you could ever desire, while “I’m Fine” turns up the abrasive amplification off the charts with chants of “you’re quiet, I’m fine”, while “Crash Life” is one of the most beautiful scuzzy garage pop numbers deserving to be played on college stations, podcasts, and radio stations everywhere. “Chlorine Dream” provides a lo-fi interlude of swimming pool splashed drum machine electrics, while “Goldmine” takes you back to Swim Team’s regularly scheduled cyclone spinning sound. The band’s massive sound takes on even greater forms and heights on the romantic “I want to kiss you all” affections that play out on “Cherri Girls”, to the sparse lo-fi minimalism of “Everything Went Wrong” that meditates on things that fall apart, and the discontinuities that can occur within a day’s time. The mood and growls return on the freak show descriptions on “Reanimator”, followed by the vaudevillian tape recorded vignette “I’m Going To Hell”, as “TV” kicks out the jams & angst with the television on, to the sad song of things thrown out and discarded on “Closest Thing”, closing it out with the minimalist demo-like hymn of adolescent angst and cognition on “Teenage Mind”. Read our following roundtable interview with Lillian, Ben, BJ, & John.
Tell us what’s great these days in the Cincinnati, Ohio scenes, and how you all find that scene impacts the Swim Team sound.
Lillian: Everyone except me played in some of my favorite bands in Cincinnati before Swim Team even started. There’s a lot going on right now and a lot of bands I like.
Fleshmother and Birdie Hearse are probably my favorites. In regards to sound I’m never
really sure because none of us ever sat down and were like “we want to sound like this”
which is probably the coolest part about playing in this band.
BJ: The music’s good. We all enjoy good music.
John: I really, really enjoy taking my kids to go see The Modulators during “Party at
the Park” in Alt Park. There’s food, wine, dancing…just an overall really great time! I
MODULATE! (I have that bumper sticker)
Ben: There’s a new Charlie Kaufman movie set in Cincinnati where the out-of-towner’s taxi driver just keeps talking about our great zoo and the chili. And then the passenger looks up and sees a zoo billboard. It’s all leading up to an existential crisis and does a good job representing the overall scene here. But, inside that there’s a bubble of great bands with a lot of promise. Mostly based in Northside. Mostly punk or garage rock. A lot of bands play too many local shows in my opinion, but that’s just how it is. One of our best venues has for years been luring bands to play for nothing more than a free burrito. We do it for love.
Basement hangouts with Swim Team; press photo courtesy of the band.
What sort of song writing/drafting techniques do you all employ together?
Lillian: It’s typically a group thing like someone will be fucking around with something and we’ll end up forming a song around that.
BJ: We get together with some beers and just start playing.
John: If something sounds cool to us all, we just roll with it until we find ourselves at
the end of a song. We also just assume whatever liberty we want, which helps to making
the writing process quick.
Ben: Our guitarist John (who also records us) prompts all of our productivity. Writing,
practicing, booking, recording. He’s a saint. We all create our own parts—most of our
songs are not premeditated or singular in perspective. We party harder than we practice. It’s better that way. Mango-ritas. If it’s Mean Girls, Lil is in Rachel McAdams’ Plastics crew but not her, John is a soccer star and BJ and I are unnamed hacky-sack hippies who are stoked.
Through the scuzz & distorted lenses with Swim Team; press photo courtesy of the band.
The Infinity Cat cassette contains so much energy, so much remarkable attitude, so many cool riffs, and still more; what did everyone appreciate the most in drafting and recording this release?
Lillian: Hangin with cool dudes. Good timin’ it.
BJ: The whole things just been a damn good time.
Ben: We did in our own time in a way that felt low key and natural. There are 12 songs but they’re all demos that John and Jerri (from Vacation) recorded. I think at least one was recorded on a cell phone. Shout out to Rob for letting us use his studio and backyard pool, though.
John: I think what I appreciated the most about the recordings, is that they’re mostly
demos that were recorded immediately after the song was finished being written.
Swim Team live at The Comet; photographed by Scott Besseler.
What should we know about what might be in store down the road in the Swim Team schedule and vision cast?
Lillian: We have a tour scheduled in April which I’m very excited about. Also beginning to write the next album. Tryna do vinyl. Want to continue to hold the high score on penthouse photo hunt.
Ben: We’ve got some tour dates coming up before more recording. I want to do a Primitives cover and maybe also “God Gave Rock and Roll to You”…because she did.
John: We’re doing an April tour, and working on the LP. I’m also personally excited for the Switzerlands’ reunion coming to Cincinnati.
BJ: More rock n roll.
Swim Team’s self-titled is available now via Infinity Cat Cassette Series in batches limited to 350 lime green cassettes.
