New Audio: Night Swimming Shares Yearning and Heartbroken “Five-Year Plan”

Currently split between Bath and Bristol, Night Swimming — Meg Jones (vocals), Sam Allen (guitar), Jesse Roache (guitar), Josh Nottle (bass) and Torin Moore (drums) — are a rising British dream pop quintet, whose remarkably cinematic sound draws from their collective love of film and scores, Cocteau Twins, The Cure, Radiohead, Wolf Alice, Just Mustard, Warpaint and a lengthy list of others. Meg Jones’ lyrics are often semi-veiled autobiography that draw from her own experiences and those close to her while also being influenced by Joni Mitchell, Laura Marling, Ben Howard, Daughter‘s Elena Tonra, The Cure‘s Robert Smith and Lana Del Rey. 

Unlike their contemporaries, the rising British outfit has patiently taken the necessary steps to hone both their sound and live show, while landing support slots with acts like Coach Party, L’Objectif, JOVM mainstays The Orielles, The Blinders, Sad Night Dynamite, Automotion, Home Counties and a list of others. The rising British outfit played an opening set on the Dot To Dot Festival‘s SWX stage ahead of  Picture Parlor, Mary in the Junkyard, Hovvdy and Wunderhouse.

The members of Night Swimming have have also been covered by The Line of Best Fit, Dork Magazine, Rough Trade, The Rodeo and Notion Magazine while receiving airplay from BBC Radio 6’s Emily Pilbeam and landing on Radio X’s X-Posure playlist. Adding to a very busy year, Night Swimming’s debut EP No Place To Land is slated for a September 27, 2024 release. Recorded at Devon, UK‘s Middle Farm Studios last year, the Peter Miles-produced EP was recorded live to tape and features industrial rhythms set against an atmospheric soundscape, deeply influenced by Beach House‘s and Slowdive’s live shows, which the band noted combined sensory elements and a deep emotional response. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about EP single “Let That Be Enough,” a song that features propulsive and thumping percussion, shimmering and reverb soaked guitars and a rousingly anthemic and cathartic chorus as a lush and cinematic bed for Meg Jones’ bewitchingly ethereal delivery. Seemingly bridging Thank Your Lucky Stars and Depression Cherry-era Beach House with Once Twice Melody-era Beach House sonically, “Let That Be Enough” thematically touches on perfectionism and obsessive thoughts with the sort of novelistic attention to psychological detail of either someone who has lived it — or has personally seen it in others. Throughout there’s a sense of aching and vacillating doubt, confusion, bargaining and then a gradually begrudging acceptance and even a sort of trust. 

“‘Let That Be Enough’ is about moving on from past experiences,” Night Swimming’s Meg Jones explains, ” as well as learning to trust yourself and accepting the choices that you’ve made.”

The EP’s final single, EP closing track “Five-Year Plan” is a slow-burning and painterly-like shoegazer take on dream pop built around a shimmering wall of sound featuring swirling and shimmering guitar textures and thunderous drumming serving as a dreamily lush bed for Jones’ to sing about the loss of a close relationship with the bitterly yearning ache of someone who’s been unexpectedly dropped.

“‘Five-Year Plan’ is about the feeling of being dropped suddenly, without much explanation, by someone you were really close to,” Night Swimming’s Meg Jones explains. “The words were written quickly and without a lot of conscious thought, compared with our other songs. I think this captured the honesty of the difficult emotions I was experiencing at the time.”

“Like all of the tracks on the EP, ‘Five-Year Plan’ was recorded as a live performance to analogue tape,” Jones continues. “We recorded the songs this way to give them their own energy and movement akin to our live shows. There were minimal overdubs on ‘Five-Year Plan,’ however we did experiment with layers such as double tracked vocals/harmonies, a synth bass and even some acoustic guitar to thicken the mix. In terms of the writing process, the track was started by Jesse bringing an arpeggio melody to rehearsal that he’d be working on, and it was fleshed out by the rest of the band to create the wall of sound that is heard in the recording. A few of us were coincidentally experiencing similar life events at the same time, in the middle of winter, which definitely impacted the writing process. The song switches metre from 7/8 to 4/4 which we felt provided a cathartic release to end the song.”