AEM025 Swimming in Speakers

I love the inter­net.  It’s great to live in an age where two ordi­nary friends in a small town in Upstate New York can self pro­duce an extra­or­di­nary EP and rise to indie fame in a mat­ter of months.  Or per­haps multi-instrumentalist Chris Clarke and vocal­ist Meadow Eliz were not so ordi­nary to begin with.  Nev­er­the­less, the pair have done pretty well for them­selves con­sid­er­ing that they met lit­tle more than a year ago.  Here’s a short chronol­ogy of their efforts:

Octo­ber 2008: Eliz and Clarke meet at bowl­ing alley in Saranac Lake, Pop­u­la­tion 5041.  Shortly after­wards, they cross paths at the deli in which Eliz is work­ing.  From these hum­ble begin­nings a strong friend­ship is formed.

Fall 2008: Eliz and Clarke work together com­pos­ing music for a stu­dent the­atre pro­duc­tion at St. Lawrence Uni­ver­sity.  They enjoy col­lab­o­rat­ing so much that they decide to con­tinue mak­ing music after the pro­duc­tion ends.

Win­ter 2009: Eliz and Clarke find relief from the snowy sub­zero cli­mate of Saranac Lake in Clarke’s home stu­dio.  Armed with a Casio key­board, a lap­top, a hodge-podge of ana­log equip­ment, and a bit of instru­men­ta­tion help from some friends, they record and pro­duce an EP under the name Swim­ming in Speak­ers.

From there, it all hap­pened vir­tu­ally overnight.  Eliz and Clarke quickly become “dar­lings of the inter­net.” They’ve been inter­viewed on a num­ber of blogs and radio sta­tions and their song “In Know­ing” was aired on BBC 6 Music with an intro­duc­tion by Tom Robinson.

Every­body loves a happy end­ing, but happy begin­nings are nice too and Swim­ming in Speak­ers has had an unusu­ally happy begin­ning.  Sure they’ve got­ten a few lucky breaks, but that’s not to say that their suc­cess is unde­served.  On the con­trary, I think they have poten­tial to be huge.  And with any luck, this fea­ture in The Ampeater Review will cat­a­pult them into the upper ech­e­lons of star­dom (or more likely, their suc­cess will help this mod­est web­site get a few more views).  That said, I’m going to stop pon­tif­i­cat­ing for a moment and give the music a chance to speak for itself.

A-side “In Know­ing” is the first cut and obvi­ous radio sin­gle off Swim­ming In Speak­ers EP. It has a strong grove and enough hooks to catch any lis­tener.  The record­ing is mas­ter­fully pro­duced, with bub­bling synths bounc­ing around in stereo and lay­ers of vocals over­dubbed in all the right places.  Nor­mally I’m a bit wary of any band that uses a Casio key­board en lieu of a drum­mer, but in this case it’s the per­fect fit.

How­ever, if the catchy synth-pop instru­men­tals are what grabbed me on the first lis­ten, its Eliz’s soft voice and off-kilter lyrics that have made a last­ing impres­sion and dif­fer­en­ti­ate “In Know­ing” from other infec­tious jams.  The verses are mean­der­ing and ver­bose and don’t fol­low a clear rhyme scheme.  One of my favorite lines:

“I com­plete this rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a utopian love affair within which you perform.”

The cho­rus, in con­trast, is a sim­ple refrain.  It’s easy to remem­ber, but packed with ambiguity.

“In know­ing how do you decide…”

Eliz’s deliv­ery is com­pletely relaxed.  Although her voice is pro­duced, it retains a dis­tinctly nat­ural qual­ity.  And yet, it never seems at odds with the glossy instru­men­tals.  The two inter­act play­fully, like the best of friend.

Like Eliz and Clarke.  Per­haps that’s a good way to think about Swim­ming in Speak­ers…  It’s the kind of music that only friends could make.  Eliz and Clarke have remark­able chem­istry.   In an inter­view for Amer­i­can Indie, Clarke explained their song­writ­ing process.

“Usu­ally, I will write a phrase or riff or beat or all three — Meadow will lis­ten to all the ideas I have come up with over a cou­ple of days — if some­thing sparks her inter­est, we’ll lay down some vocals. If we like what we have, Meadow will hunt for some lyrics, and we’ll refine the melody.”

Or, for a bet­ter glimpse into their cre­ative process, check out this lyric sheet.  Clarke typed the lyrics, and Eliz is respon­si­ble for the cor­rec­tions, doo­dles and all.

Both Eliz and Clarke are self taught musi­cians. In fact, Eliz explains that as a child she was pro­hib­ited from tak­ing voice lessons because her mom “didn’t want some­one tin­ker­ing with my instru­ment.” An unusual deci­sion, but def­i­nitely the right one.  Uncor­rupted by the­ory, the pair embrace their nat­ural under­stand­ing of music.

Although Swim­ming in Speak­ers began as a stu­dio project, fueled by their suc­cess, Clarke and Eliz have recruited a num­ber of friends to help flush out their live set. The cur­rent lineup includes Kyle Mur­ray on drums and per­cus­sion, Christina Grant on cello, and Colin Dehond on addi­tional instru­men­ta­tion. Live, they have an incred­i­bly organic feel and employ an amaz­ing array of strings and per­cus­sion, as well as instru­men­ta­tion you couldn’t imag­ine (e.g. didgeri­doo, mouth harp, etc).  Since the trans­for­ma­tion of Swim­ming in Speak­ers from a stu­dio project into a per­form­ing band, the group has moved in a slightly new direc­tion, putting more focus on acoustic instruments.

B-side “Nev­er­green” is a stripped down acoustic ditty.  The arrange­ment is remark­ably sparse; the only instru­ments are a tinny lightly-picked acoustic gui­tar, and a sweet cello.  On the sec­ond verse, reversed sounds bounce around in stereo, but only periph­er­ally, as an extra color rather than a focal point.  The nuances of Eliz’s voice are more read­ily appar­ent when not com­pet­ing for atten­tion with heavy synths.  While the lyrics of “Nev­er­green” are rel­a­tively sim­ple, but she does a lot with her phras­ing and articulation.

“Oh wait, once more, will you come back to me…”

She plays with that “me” for three times the length of the phrase, bend­ing in and out of a soft falsetto.

As Swim­ming in Speak­ers rounds their one year anniver­sary, it will be inter­est­ing to see how they evolve.  How will the calm sounds of Saranac Lake mesh with the bus­tle of NYC?  Eagerly await­ing a full length album.

Nate Green­berg

Side A — In Knowing Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Side B — Nevergreen Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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