SWiiMS’s ‘Fade Days’ comes from the band’s latest studio album titled Into The Blue Night. A cathartic trip of top-notch indie rock that calls to mind countless of the underappreciated genre’s stylings, done with taste and grace, to a devastatingly beautiful effect.
Toronto based, SWiiMS is a three-piece that was born to fulfill a musical vision spearheaded by Mai Diaz Langou and her musical companion Colin Thompson, sharing the vocals and guitar duties, respectively, and with a great deal of flexibility to their roles in the music. They were later joined by Cian O’Ruanaidh on bass and some more vocal firepower. The results are undeniably cathartic. Loud and organic, the music also is quite haunting, with spectral vocal harmonies and, in the case of ‘Fade Days’, upbeat composition.
Bright, reverberated, open, and slightly overdriven guitar arpeggios lead the way on SWiiMS’s ‘Fade Days’, supported by the minimal but nuanced vocal ensemble from the trio, and with a deep groove in the song’s spine, we find in our hands a solid piece of music that packs a punch only a trio of incredibly focused and confident musicians can achieve. The song is fantastically structured with a rhythm break that introduces a jubilant outro that is a world apart from how the song starts.
Wonderfully written and performed, and with an equally beautiful video shot by O’Ruanaidh, ‘Fade Days’ is an absolute audio-visual treat for anyone who ever fancied a less harrowing version of Cemeteries, another indie rock marvel, or a more immediate version of Slowdive. SWiiMS certainly are faithful to the sound established by the pioneers of the genre, but are never for a moment lazy or uninspired, and are certainly and thoroughly their own thing.
