Swim School establish themselves as bold, brash, and bright on Making Sense Of It All

One band who understands this, is Edinburgh’s Swim School. Where some bands called it a day throughout the course of the pandemic, the Scottish quartet, and frontwoman Alice Johnson in particular, have used their experiences throughout the last 18 months to inform their debut EP, making sense of it all.

A fitting title for an EP in which each song was “based on an event that I’ve experienced in the last year, and the effect it had on my own mental state and also the mental state of everyone who was involved”. The result is five tracks of richly varied alt rock that are equally at home taking cues from current acts such as Wolf Alice, as they are ‘90s shoegaze royalty like Ride or Slowdive.

From the heady and hypnotic likes of "Everything You Wanted", a track that floats in on a bed of ethereal electronics before erupting in a industrial-sized anthemic conclusion, to the caustic and cathartic opening track "Let Me See Inside Your Head", making sense of it all is a richly varied release that never once feels disjointed. Instead, it feels both timely and timeless; its tracks linked through the EP’s narrative and understanding of their influences without ever feeling derivative.

Indeed, in making sense of it all, Swim School have established themselves as one of the UK’s boldest, brashest, and brightest prospects. Not just musically, but in understanding what’s important to discuss, both on a personal level, and on something much wider.