HEADSWIM – DESPITE YOURSELF – LP REVIEW

It’s always great to hear an old(ish) album by a band that you’re completely unfamiliar with and that’s what has happened with the classic Despite Yourself by Headswim which was released back in 1997 and now it’s expanded.

 

Think alternative rock, but with a side of existential dread. Unsurprising really, as this album was written and recorded not long after the death of Dan and Toms’s brother Matthew from leukemia.

 

This is not an album to play at your house party unless you want people to start staring into their drinks and having profound conversations about “what it all means.” .

For some reason Headswim got compared to Radiohead back in the day. Buggered if I know how. Dan Glendings vocals have more in common with Bono than Thom York and then there’s the orchestration which is quite simply sublime. This album is like finding a diary in your parents’ attic—unexpectedly emotional, slightly dusty, but undeniably fascinating.

 

Headswim produced an excellent representation of ‘Albums That Make Me Stare Pensively Into the Middle Distance.’
The stand-out track in the version of the stringed-infused version of the ‘hit’ Tourniquet  which makes up just a small part of the expanded version of this classic album.

There is no bad track on this record and despite its depressing existential nature, you still won’t be able to help yourself swaying as the album swaddles you like a weighted blanket of emotional turmoil. It’s heavy, but it’s also oddly comforting.

Score 9/10