Britain's
Swim Deep amp up their catchy pop hooks and dance beats without shying away from their trademark neo-shoegaze guitar guns on their inspired sophomore album, 2015's
Mothers. If the group's debut, 2013's
Where the Heaven Are We, found the Birmingham outfit repurposing a catchall brand of late-'80s and early-'90s rock from
Ride to
the Stone Roses, then
Mothers takes the influences even further, mixing in propulsive electronics, synth-heavy new wave lyricism, and exotic Day-Glo trip-hop beats that all speak to a very '90s Brit-pop-centric view of the world. It would be easy to dismiss
Swim Deep's ambient, heavily layered aesthetic as merely slavish re-creation were it not for the invention and knack for addictive melody the group displays throughout much of
Mothers. Cuts like the languidly funky "One Great Song and I Could Change the World" and the new age gospel trance of "To My Brother," with their shimmery keyboards, laser-buzzing basslines, and falsetto vocals (courtesy of lead singer Austin Williams), sound something along the lines of
Happy Mondays teaming up with
Lush for a Pierce Brosnan-era James Bond soundtrack. Elsewhere,
Swim Deep dive headlong into a handful of uber-catchy John Hughes film-ready numbers, including the Motown-meets-
Stock, Aitken & Waterman-sounding earworm "Namaste" and equally singalong-inducing "Grand Affection." In the end, there's something amusingly kooky and undeniably likable about a band that can evoke both the acid house,
Rolling Stones spirituality of a band like
Primal Scream just as it can, perhaps unintentionally, summon the ghost of early-'90s
Duran Duran. If it was
Swim Deep's goal to create a sound that falls somewhere between the sneering pop craftsmanship of
Pulp and the heady, driving, psychedelic electronica of
Chemical Brothers, they've more than achieved it. As Williams sings on the album-ending "Fueiho Boogie," an epic eight-minute dance-club bender, "It's four to the floor here/How could they resist?/Oohhh, we're in the house of fun." ~ Matt Collar