‘A pulsating alt-pop gem’
Reviews continue to come in for Swimmer One’s debut album, The Regional Variations, and have been pretty great across the board. Some quotes below. You can read full versions at www.swimmerone.co.uk/reviews.
The Balance Company, a track from the album, will be released as a single early in the new year. Swimmer One recently shot a video for the song The Balance Company with director Daniel Warren and the theatre company Highway Diner. Live dates for 2008 should be announced soon too.
‘They give intelligence a good name and are more windswept than worthy. Their music has the quirky intricacy of Belle & Sebastian and the soaring atmosphere of Blue Nile, and it is very, very good.’ The Guardian.
‘An exhilarating debut. The Regional Variations is one of the finest of this year’s freshman efforts. A pulsating alt-pop gem.’ The Independent.
‘Captivating to the point of hypnosis, The Regional Variations is a record of such heart-melting honesty not even the bitter autumnal chill can penetrate its innately warm interior.’ Drowned in Sound.
‘If David Bowie ever got stuck in a lift shaft with Jarvis Cocker and Bill Drummond, they might eventually come up with something as enticing as The Regional Variations.’ Metro.
‘Swimmer One’s debut is a promiscuous synth pop marvel, littered with doomsayers, fakesters, bureaucrats, drowning men, black sheep, theatre freaks and TV clowns in fuck-me heels. An erudite deuce of Central Belt electro-pervs who tally Scotland’s coastal towns as one might red light one-night stands, Swimmer One are a bookish, codpiece-disco treat.’ Plan B
‘Might just be the find of the year for the uninitiated… Like a stripped down Scottish Pet Shop Boys without the funny hats or a more melancholy synth-based Pulp, Swimmer One’s brilliance should be shouted from the rooftops.’ The List.
‘A melodic and oblique approach, and a lyric sheet which reads every bit as well as it sounds, set them apart. The Regional Variations is about as original as it is going to get in pop land.’ Scotland on Sunday.
‘Assuredly one of the best albums you’ll hear all year, if not millennium… If you have any liking for - well, not just electronic music, but genuinely life-affirming pop, I urge you to listen to this album. I guarantee you will not be disappointed.’ Is This Music.
‘As one would expect from this quietly brilliant duo, The Regional Variations has been worth the epic wait: 11 intelligent, wry vignettes wrapped in rich, perfectionist pop.’ The Herald.
‘Edinburgh duo Hamish Brown and Andrew Eaton have released a surefire contender for debut of the year… A class act, head and shoulders above trite chart fodder.’ Shropshire Star.
‘There are a few remarkable albums that sonically embrace technology while simultaneously displaying cynicism, paranoia and claustrophobia at certain aspects of the modern world. The Regional Variations is one such release and joins counterparts The Sophtware Slump and OK Computer in pulling it off so marvellously… Perhaps not the cheeriest record of the year, but certainly one of the best.’ The Skinny.
‘Proving those end-of-year polls should never be published early comes the debut album from Swimmer One, containing choruses so addictive, so punch-the-air pop perfect, it deserves to be a contender.’ Edinburgh Evening News