Fuck off! Off!” Bill Ryder-Jones barks gently but sternly, swatting at the hand looming over the synth in front of him. Beside him, James Balmont pulls back, the mischief running through his fingers extinguished as he’s scolded like a puppy whose energy is becoming a bit too distracting. As Swim Deep’s keyboardist slinks back to his seat, he protests through a mock pout: “I was going to play the X-Files theme!”
It’s late August 2025, and Swim Deep have decamped to Brussels’ ICP Studios to work on their fifth album, ‘Hum’. After helming 2024’s ‘There’s A Big Star Outside’, Ryder-Jones is back in the producer’s chair, and alongside engineer Giovanni Lando, the cohort are entering the final stages of recording when NME joins them in Belgium.
Over the two weeks that Balmont, frontman Austin “Ozzy” Williams, drummer Thomas Fiquet and new guitarist J.J. Buchanan have spent in the wood-panelled studio (bassist Cavan McCarthy has had to sit out the trip due to childcare commitments), progress has been good. The band are in good spirits, but a slight undercurrent of tension starts to build in the 24 hours NME spends in their company. In a few days’ time, they’ll return to the UK. Before then, fat needs to be trimmed, details nailed down, and ideas fleshed out until each song reaches its maximum potential. The clock is ticking, and each time they listen back to a track, a discussion follows about what needs fixing, adding or taking away.
Once the layers and details are worked out, though, the world is in for a treat. Even on first, unfinished listen, it’s clear that this album is shaping up to be something beautiful. As Williams leaves the room to work on something by himself, the rest of the band play through a handful of tracks for NME – the results of a “purple patch” of songwriting between the frontman and Buchanan. “Each song should go on a journey,” Balmont shares as one track fades out of the speakers, calling the notion one of this album’s “guiding lights”. You can sense that approach in the likes of the slow, grungy stomp of ‘Mud’ and the emotive beauty of the Buchanan-penned ‘Broken’ – songs that grow, change and weave stories.
While there’s often a marked difference between each Swim Deep album, here they dig deeper into the sound of ‘There’s A Big Star Outside’ – softer, grungier, more songwriterly. Lyrically, it’s introspective but accessible, filled with personal reflections that are moving, but also make you consider where you are in your own life. On the bright, bursting ‘You, Me & Mary’, a touching contemplation directed to his wife and one-year-old daughter, Williams wonders with infectious self-observation: “Is this the best that I can be?”
ICP Studios is a fitting place for these reflections to unfold. It’s a space Swim Deep have visited at several points in their journey, first setting foot inside in 2012 when, as a rising act backed by plenty of buzz, they came to record their debut album, ‘Where The Heaven Are We’. “That first year, [we were signed to a] major label, [had] three meals a day, private chef, all that stuff,” Williams recalls. When they came back to record follow-up ‘Mothers’ in 2014, there was “one less meal [a day], [the label were] a bit more cautious with us”. In the evening, as we walk to a bowling alley imaginatively named Brussels Bowling – a consistent fixture in the band’s visits to the city – Balmont regales us with youthful tales of drunken festive nights, dragging Christmas trees to the studio, and “tops off in the club” for one of Williams’ birthdays past.
In 2023, they returned to make ‘There’s A Big Star Outside’, no longer those responsibility-free kids but adults in their thirties. At that time, Williams was about to become a father; his experience of that then-impending reality becoming actualised colours ‘Hum’. When NME visits the band, his daughter Mary and partner Nell have also come over to be together for a few days between sessions, reinforcing that sense that the studio is somewhere the band have grown up.
Across ‘Hum’, Williams meditates on family and the ties that bind us together, the shift that comes both with a new life and the grief of departures. In the same month Mary was born, Nell’s father died – a combination of seismic life events the musician calls “mind-splitting”.
“Mary was the thing that brought anyone joy in that time,” he says, slouched in a booth at Brussels Bowling after a chaotic round on the lanes (Williams comes out on top; NME and Fiquet hold up the bottom end, despite frantically studying bowling tutorials on YouTube to aid our game). “You’re mourning, you’re trying to be sensitive, and you don’t want to put any of that on the child. A lot of growth came with that and the songs came out of that.” This album, he half-jokes, is one that can be summed up as “live, loss, love”: “The love makes the loss harder, but the love makes the live easier.”
Through that world-uprooting time, the experience of becoming a dad has reminded him of the purpose of the path he’s chosen. “With Mary, I just write my songs like nursery rhymes or whatever,” he explains fondly. “It brings you back to what songwriting is about – sharing stories and keeping stories memorable for people with melody.”
Around the time of Mary’s birth, Williams questioned whether continuing to make a living from music was “the right thing to do” or if he should find a more stable way to provide for his family. It’s the kind of conundrum that’s plagued many musicians, the financial insecurity of band life causing Swim Deep to lose some members over the years. Today, each of the five bandmates works a day job alongside the band – a necessity that also means they can’t be a “proper band” because their clashing schedules make it impossible to rehearse.
Why, then, do they keep going? “I think 10 years ago, a big part of making music was trying to get recognition,” Balmont reasons the next morning as the band gather around a table in a room lined with plaques celebrating albums made at ICP. “I think now, we’re pursuing creative satisfaction as a more personal thing.” He nods to an interview he did with Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne a few years back in his day job as a culture journalist. “I remember him telling me, ‘When you get to this age, it’s not about just being with the lads anymore and having a good time – you’ve really got to love the music.’ I feel like that’s a realisation we’ve come to and that’s maybe why we are still here.”
“Me and Cav have always said that our day will come – we just don’t know when” – Austin Williams
“But also, what would we do if we weren’t doing this?” Fiquet says in a tone that suggests there is no alternative for him. “I’ve never not been in a band since I was 15, except for one month when I lived in London. I wouldn’t know what to do.”
“I saw someone in a band that makes a lot of money say, ‘All of our peers have given up’,” Williams adds. “It’s like, ‘Well, yeah, obviously – they haven’t been making money.’ It does feel sometimes like we’ve been left on the shelf, but I think it’s really important that we carry on to show that it’s possible for bands to do that.”
For those who believe in the band – whether fans, peers or colleagues – Swim Deep still elicit a huge passion. As we wait for our lane to be ready at the bowling alley, Ryder-Jones waxes lyrical to NME about the band’s talents in a way that could convince the staunchest non-believer. Midway through, he makes eye contact with Williams at the bar behind us, a bemused look on the frontman’s face. “She didn’t ask, but she wanted to know – I could see it in her eyes,” Ryder-Jones grins.
The next day, the producer isn’t quite as buoyant, that ticking clock getting ever louder. “It feels like there’s still a lot of work to be done,” he sighs, taking a drag of a cigarette. “It still feels like we haven’t quite cracked some things.” Whether they have time left to tend to those areas remains to be seen, but he’s sure of one thing. “They’re definitely going in the right direction. Sometimes it takes two or three records to settle into a new era. It can be a challenge to your audience, so you [just have to] keep putting out good quality records, which I think we are doing.”
‘Hum’ might not mark a fresh chapter for the band in terms of sound, but it feels like their energy has been refreshed by the addition of Buchanan. The new guitarist officially came into the line-up in spring 2025 after Robbie Wood had to quit due to the financial constraints of the band. “It’s completely changed the band, in my opinion,” Williams enthuses. “We never really want to use session musicians because, as great as they can be, we always want there to be a brotherhood.”
As they look ahead to what might come next in this rejuvenated family unit, there’s a pause to reflect on how much they’ve grown. “It feels like we’re much more complete and assured of ourselves,” Balmont suggests. “We know who we are as people now, and I feel like the music is much more wholesome and, in a way, more sophisticated. It just feels like us, like we’ve arrived at the conclusion of who we are.”
Back in the booth at the bowling alley, as balls clatter into pins, Williams’ mind turns to a romantic, optimistic streak that’s run through the band for years. “Me and Cav have always said that our day will come – we just don’t know when,” he smiles. Until that day arrives, Swim Deep will be here making music and sharing the stories that mean the most to them for as long as the world will let them.
Swim Deep’s ‘Hum’ is out on June 19 via Submarine Cat Records.
ON THE RISE
Gang of Youths frontman David Le’aupepe has spoken to NME about the band’s first new single in four years ‘Things Take Time’ and the “philosophical freedom” that has come with writing new material for the band’s long-awaited fourth studio album.
The single marks the band’s first new original material since their acclaimed 2022 album ‘Angel In Realtime.’, and marks a significant change of pace. Rather than returning to the maximalist, big-swinging indie-rock that has shaped their previous albums, ‘Things Take Time’ opts for a refined and jazzy groove that swings atop sparse piano chords and stabs of horns.
As far as comeback singles go, it’s about as subtle and discreet as possible – as if it’s entering through a side door rather than kicking the front gate open. As Le’aupepe revealed, this has very much been done by design.
‘Angel In Realtime.’ was given four stars by NME upon its 2022 release, and described as “a triumphant exploration of love and life”. It led to the biggest shows of the band’s career, including their first-ever headlining arena shows in their native Australia and selling out Brixton Academy in the UK. After a final show in support of the record at British Summer Time with Lana Del Rey, however, Gang of Youths effectively went dark – save for the late 2023 release of ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ for the festive season.
“We all live quiet lives,” Le’aupepe told NME. “We don’t have our own social media, or anything like that. We’re not interested in the public stuff, and I tend to require a lot of respite from the world. Having said that, we’re all kind of ready for it again now. It’s weirdly exciting.”
Check out the full interview with Le’aupepe below, where he discussed the differences between observational and emotive songwriting, the ongoing struggle with perfectionism and why Gang of Youths continually has to die in order to be reborn again.
NME: Hello Dave. Of all the new material the band has been working on, why was ‘Things Take Time’ chosen as the first single?
David Le’aupepe: “Well, the powers that be chose it – probably because it’s the shortest one! It’s a three-minute song, which is miraculous for a band like ours. It’s also a pop song, which is a form I’ve not really dabbled in much. It was a really liberating song to write – I’ve used that word so many times in interviews in the past, but in this instance it really set me free in a sense. I’m actually singing for once, too. I’ve done a lot of talking that happens to be in tune, or these grandiose fucking yells, but I haven’t really allowed my voice to be free like this before.
“One of the things I really like about the song is that, when it was finished and we listened back to it, it felt like a proper break with the past – and we were OK with that. We’ve achieved great things in the past, and we’re proud of it, but this is the thread we’re following now musically. I was delighted by that.”
What place did the song come from in a lyrical sense?
“It’s about nothing… Well, not nothing. It’s about growing plants. My wife ordered too many tomato seeds, so she went to work growing all of these tomatoes in our house. I go over to record with Tom [Hobden, Gang of Youths’ multi-instrumentalist] at his home studio, and that overlooks his back garden. His wife Emma grows all these beautiful plants in the yard. It got me fascinated with the cycle of growth and death, and being baffled that people can grow things without killing them.
“It’s funny… I feel like death and rebirth are a constant part of our subject matter. We’re always dealing with them in one way or another, so it’s kind of weird that we almost accidentally continued it – even though the song is so different for us.”
How naturally did the musical change of pace come to you? There’s fittingly a bit of a parallel with a song like ‘Tend the Garden’, but even that feels a lot bigger and more layered in comparison to ‘Things Take Time’…
“I came in with the idea one night after dinner, and played the little riff. Recorded it, played a drum part, recorded that, got Donnie [Borzestowski, Gang of Youths’ drummer] to redo it, and voilà. You hear all of us at work on this song. When Tom heard my little ‘doo doo doo’ in the verse, it was his idea to chuck in a horn arrangement to replicate them. Donnie is a world-class drummer, and doing something a bit jazzier was right in his repertoire.
“As for Jung [Kim, Gang of Youths’ guitarist/keyboardist], he always has such a deft hand. He’s always so careful, and so organised with his thoughts. I think that’s why it was funny when I finally sent in my vocal take – after doing like 400 takes, he was just like, ‘Fuck it, I don’t really need to worry about it’. Nothing came easily, but everything just made sense.”
Everything went into radio silence after ‘Angel in Realtime.’ Was there ever a period between that cycle ending and the new one beginning where you genuinely thought Gang of Youths was over?
“Of course. That happens after every album we’ve made. I sit there at the end saying ‘I’m done’, and then enough time passes and I’m up like Leo [DiCaprio] in The Wolf of Wall Street: ‘I’m not fucking leaving!’ Out of all of the cycles, ‘Angel’ was definitely the hardest. I love that album, I really do; I think it’s my best songwriting, but it was this whole family odyssey. The arena thing was so weird, too. We’re an indie rock band – we never set out to play in stadiums, especially when you look at how scrappy we were when the band started. It was just the nature of things.
“If we came back trying to be an arena-rock band? Snoozy as fuck. We’re not in that place anymore. Those songs from ‘Angel’ are everyone else’s now. They don’t really play a role in my day-to-day life, or my inner world. What ‘Things Take Time’ represents is a philosophical freedom from having to write about personal shit. I had to break this cycle of feeling like I have to make opuses that dig into the underbelly of my life every single time. I could just write songs with their own meaning, that are curious and spiritual without having to directly cost me something.”
Was it a process of realising a song could still be reflective of you without having to be very hyper-literally about you, the way a song like ‘Brothers’ was?
“The writing now is less and less about trying to find things within myself to deal with, and more and more about things that I notice and that I contemplate. The new songs are, more often than not, about something I’ve observed rather than something I’ve felt. They’re about the external. There’s another new song we played, ‘YeYu’, and that’s probably the only really personal song out of all of them. That’s a real point of difference for a songwriter like me.”
As you just mentioned, you played your first show in three years earlier this month at a small theatre 90 minutes south of Sydney, with three new songs on the setlist – including ‘Things Take Time’. What did performing on stage again mean to you?
“Loads. It renewed something in me. There was a real warmth and affection there – you always get that with regional audiences in beautiful theatres. I knew some people who were in the front row, and who said hi afterwards. People have gotten married since they last saw us, or had kids since they last saw us. It was nice to see a lot of those familiar faces, and to see how they’re existing and how life is for them now. Hell, it was just nice to see people again. Sometimes, the boredom and the monotony of playing live and touring can wear down on even the most dedicated road dog. We all felt that at the end of the last tour, so there were some nerves in coming back to it. As soon as we stepped out on stage, though, it was like, ‘this is what it’s all about. This is the point of it all’.”
That show felt like a lot of the older material was being reinvented through the lens of the new stuff. You played ‘Magnolia’ solo on electric guitar, and ‘Let Me Down Easy’ was pared back in a really subtle way. Can we expect Gang of Youths’ shows to play out a little differently now that it’s no longer a confetti-cannon arena rock show?
“We haven’t even figured that out yet. This was our first foray into really doing it again, you know? The album that we’re working on has more of a sense of just plugging in and playing – a lot of bare elements of piano, bass, drums, vocals. We want these songs to stand out by themselves, as opposed to needing loads of backing tracks running in order for them to work. That factored into the live show – could we reinvent these songs in a way that makes sense to us? It was about striking a middle ground between giving people familiarity and us not dying of boredom.”
Is the new album done?
“Nah.”
How will you know when it’s done?
“When someone tells me it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever made! With [debut album, 2015’s] ‘The Positions’, I had no clue what I was doing. I just knew we had a deadline to turn everything in. With [second album, 2017’s] ‘Go Farther in Lightness’, I was totally sure about every aspect of that album before we turned it in. All I really know about this one, so far, is that when I got back the masters for ‘Things Take Time’, it felt like I was closer to the end of the album than I was to the beginning. I’ve always cooked the goose too long, I think, and now it’s a process of learning not to.”
‘Things Take Time’ is out now. Gang of Youths will perform at All Points East in London’s Hyde Park with Twenty One Pilots on August 30 before a run of UK and European shows in November and December. Visit here for tickets and more information.
