Having been impressed by this band’s brief set at Nottingham’s urban music festival Dot to Dot back in May, I was eager to see their headline tour. I wasn’t disappointed.

Venue: Rescue Rooms

Date: Saturday, September 21, 2013

Swim Deep sound like an early 90s mixtape of the best slacker rock, shoegaze and post-baggy bands. They are princes of The New Slackerism movement, with a debut album nodding to Ride, The Stone Roses and in particular the Charlatans.

Austin Williams, Swim Deep’s frontman, takes to the stage resembling revolutionary hero Che Guevara with his unkempt hair tumbling beneath his hat. Fitting, really, given his band are leaders of this nu-gaze, neo-baggyism revolution.

Jangly guitars swirl nonchalantly around a pulsing bass, while a Casio is playfully tickled. They’re the building blocks for any band digging up an early 90s vibe.

The mixture of all the aforementioned bands’ styles is apparent throughout, but there’s elements of lost greats The Soup Dragons on Soul Trippin’, and a somewhat odd choice of cover when Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is given a baggy makeover, which strangely works.

All is going well until Austin is confronted by a heckler whose presence is unwanted. “You’ve got a lot to say. You should form a band”, quips the frontman, to cheers from the crowd who had been encouraging him to jump from the balcony such was his persistent disharmony.

Their set isn’t flawless to be fair. A few bum notes here, a few glitches there, but they have some truly diamond encrusted tunes that only the fickle could criticise.

The epic She Changes The Weather seemed like the obvious set closer, but King City’s rousing “wooohah” chorus and its indier-than-thou reference to Warpaint bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg as the song’s love interest beats it, and the sell-out crowd fall deeply in love with Swim Deep.