ALBUM REVIEW: Fishing In A Small Boat – Swim Camp
Imagine a sepia-toned summer’s day spent out on the lake fishing for supper. The sun glistens across the surface as crickets chirp, bees buzz and birds sing all around you. The world truly is a peaceful place. And then the thunder comes and next thing you know you’ve capsized. That’s what listening to SWIM CAMP’s third album Fishing In A Small Boat feels like. It’s stripped-back bare bones lo-fi indie is constantly at odds with itself. At times it’s a breeze on a beautiful day, and at others it’s a storm cloud coming to rain on your parade. It’s dismal and dull, with fleeting moments of hope few and far between.
Since 2015, SWIM CAMP – brought to you from the bedroom of multi-instrumentalist Tom Morris – have crafted a collection of fuzzed-up 90s lo-fi and late-00s jangle-pop. It’s safe to say there’s been some momentum building around an act who once released music exclusively on Soundcloud. Yet, in comparison to 2019’s Barlow Hill, Fishing In A Small Boat feels like a step back. Shrouded in the sound of a pandemic-produced album, the layers that once lit up Morris’ lamentations on life are lost to the same set of chords, strumming the same set of notes until you’re blue in the face from biting your tongue.
Opener Backyard is as beige as a bowl of porridge, its midwest emo meets lo-fi indie building up and up into absolutely nothing. Follow-up Done feels like a red herring, as its minute-long strum-and-run approach sounds far from being finished. From here on out, it’s more of the same. If you fancy a cheat sheet, just imagine a supergroup of sorts between ALEX G, OWEN, REAL ESTATE and PHOEBE BRIDGERS; but without any of their song-writing prowess.
It’s not always a sinking ship mind. At times, Fishing In A Small Boat threatens to take SWIM CAMP into unchartered waters. Thread fills the lo-fi with a depth that disappears elsewhere; Ava Mirzadegan’s dual vocal harmonies haunt the underbelly whilst Molly Germer’s violin vies for the spotlight as it drifts into early-era COLDPLAY. Elsewhere, Sit Down offers up dreamy jangle-pop that shakes up the slowcore, whilst A Different Kind Of Sleep playfully toys with the pitter-patter of piano as it musters up a full-band bravado. Of course, these are all exceptions to an unwritten rule: thou must not drift from the script, or so it seems. Book Club, RC Airplane and Skinned Knees are so similar in structure that they merge into one long-winded lament. So much so that the irony of listening to the latter is that it’s just as painful as skinning your knee.
Pain, of course, is aplenty across Fishing In A Small Boat. In fact, you could go as far as arguing that SWIM CAMP has a penchant for it. Whether it’s raising a fist to the sky and defying it in search of hope or simply wading through it like a murky swamp resigned to the fatigue, it’s stuck to the lyrics like vines to a wall. Ultimately, it’s a series of songs that serve one purpose: break down the breakdowns of relationships. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
At times, the lyrics swim with tongue-in-cheek tenacity, as on RC Airplane when Morris softly notes “So high, my God, I’ve seen it coming down” in disbelief at something so good suddenly going the other way. Elsewhere, it feels like the fourth wall breaks as A Different Kind Of Sleep echoes “make believe it’s not pretend, cause maybe it won’t end” which at this point with one song to go is a terrible thought.
Fishing In A Small Boat has all the makings of a lo-fi lockdown sleeper hit, without any of the heart or soul such a gem requires. Flawed by its own formulas and felled by its accidental ability to mock itself, SWIM CAMP have somehow started swimming backwards rather than forwards on album number three.
Rating: 3/10
Fishing In A Small Boat is set for release on October 29th via Know Hope Records.
Follow SWIM CAMP on Bandcamp.