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Swim Deep have shared ‘Very Heaven’, the latest single from their upcoming fourth album, ‘There’s A Big Star Outside’. Check it out below along with our interview with the band’s frontman Austin Williams, and Bill Ryder-Jones, who produced the album.
Arriving next month, ‘There’s A Big Star Outside’ has been previewed by the singles ‘How Many Love Songs Have Died In Vegas?’ and ‘First Song’. Now, ‘Very Heaven’ – a warm, rich portrait of a relationship that paints both the ups and downs in a tender glow – captures the collaborative spirit between the band and Ryder-Jones.
“It was a song that Bill wrote,” Williams explained. “That was a real moment. The whole two songs when we were doing that song were just amazing for me and my favourite time in [Brussels studio] ICP. We hid ourselves away and wrote the lyrics.”
Ryder Jones added: “‘Very Heaven’ was a song that I was working on for my last record [the acclaimed ‘Iechyd Da’] and I couldn’t finish it. I couldn’t make it work, but I knew it was good. It needed someone else – and that’s very hard for me to admit.”
The singer-songwriter and producer first played Williams a voice note of the song as they were beginning to work together during sessions in the Wirral. “I just thought, ‘This is so good, this is right up my street, this is so perfect’,” Williams recalled. “I just didn’t stop thinking about it.”
The single takes its title from a William Wordsworth quote while, lyrically, it taps into Williams’ thoughts and feelings at a time when he was about to become a father. “Bill was trying to get me to channel those feelings, and it was very present,” he said. “A lot of the themes on the album are looking back at my childhood and understanding why I am the way I am and why my daughter will be the way that she is.
“One of the lines is, ‘You say it’s hard, that you’ve had no sleep / You’re looking very heaven to me’. It was just a romantic line to tie it all in about my partner being knackered because she was pregnant and just the reality of it all happening and how it ethereal it all was, as well as serious hard work.”
‘There’s A Big Star Outside’ stands as the band’s most reflective album yet, a shift in Williams’ songwriting that was sparked by his recent marriage as well as fatherhood. “I think it’s a lot more sensitive and a lot more vulnerable,” he shared. “I felt a different way and very instinctual, somehow. There was a lot of looking back and evaluating and then just trying to be in the present.
“It’s all about having a relationship with someone, like my daughter – I can try and be a good parent, but it’s just about having a good relationship with her.”
The album also changes sonic tact from their last record, 2019’s ‘Emerald Classics’, moving away from that record’s layers of synths and dance tinges in favour of wall-of-sound post-rock (‘First Song’), acoustic twangs (‘Fire Surrounds’) and shuffling waltzes (‘Big Star’).
“It would be very easy for Swim Deep to make a synth-pop, Killers-style record that would appease their fans,” Ryder-Jones said. “I think it’s incredibly brave what they’ve done. There’s so many easy routes in music – we know how we can get on Radio 6. I’ve got the utmost respect for Austin for writing those songs and letting them be what they are.”
Ryder-Jones added: “He’s a very underrated songwriter of his generation – I thought that before we worked together, but since then, it became very apparent.”
Before teaming up, both the band and their chosen producer had been admiring each other from afar – but first met two years ago when Williams visited Ryder-Jones at his studio. “We worked on a song called ‘Big Star’,” Williams recalled. “I brought to Bill a drum machine, some Prince-y open chords and then this melody.
Straight away, he was like, ‘Let’s get rid of that drum machine and open it up a bit’, and it honestly just became everything I’ve dreamed of Swim Deep sounding like. I felt like I’d finally found someone that got exactly what I wanted to say.”
“I remember hearing that song and the lyric ‘There’s a big star outside, do you wanna go see it?’ Hit me right hard,” Ryder-Jones added. “I was like, ‘Yes man, Swim Deep have evolved’.”
While working together, Williams and Ryder-Jones had “a few big conversations” about Swim Deep – how they want to evolve, where they want to be and what the band is. For the frontman now, the answer to those questions is partially about marking chapters in his existence. “I want to be able to look back and have these stamps on my life,” he explained. “There’s a lyric in ‘These Words’ that says, ‘Death comes to mock a point in time’ and I guess anything could mark a point in time – albums can.
“You can look back on albums and think, ‘Fuck, that’s a real sign of that time’. Sometimes that hindsight is a beautiful thing, in that sense, because you don’t really know what it’s about until you look back on it.”
Swim Deep’s ‘There’s A Big Star Outside’ will be released on June 7 via Submarine Cat Records. Check out the band’s tour dates below and visit here for tickets and information.
MAY
Wednesday 15 – Brighton The Prince Albert – SON Estrella Galicia
JUNE
Tuesday 4 – Manchester Deaf Institute
Wednesay 5 – Nottingham Bodega
Thursday 6 – Birmingham Hare
Friday 7 – Bristol Rough Trade
Saturday 8 – Blackpool Bootleg Social
Tuesday 11 – Southampton Papillon
Wednesday 12 – Oxford Bullingdon
Thursday 13 – London VU
Friday 14 – Leeds Key Club
Saturday 15 – Newcastle Think Tank
Sunday 16 – Edinburgh Mash House
SEPTEMBER
Tuesday 17 – Cologne Yuca
Wednesday 18 – Hamburg Reeperbahn
Thursday 19 – Copenhagen Ideal Bar
Saturday 21 – The Hague Paard
Sunday 22 – Paris Point FMR