Some bands manage to reminisce without lumpenly copying what has gone before them. Some bands can induce thoughts and memories without bluntly pounding them into submission first. Kite Club is one of these bands.
Going Swimming reveals Kite Club to be, above all, careful. Precision can often be the beginning of musical tedium – picture an hour spent to get that snare drum just so, and then imagine how the recording sessions for the last Coldplay album may well have panned out – but Kite Club has been exact in a different way.
Kite Club demands precision in feel, and relaxation in everything else. This song is, in turns, horizon-wide and cathedral grand, then paper-clay fragile and dainty enough to hold in the palm. Muted but piercing, dazzling but translucent, Going Swimming is a jewel-like song in all respects.
Synaesthesia may not have yet fully taken grip here at ANBAD, but it seems reasonable to say that Going Swimming is the sound that a pile of faded, round-cornered photographs of happy childhood holidays would make.
Those feelings are not easy to conjour, and it’s probably not worth our collective whiles delving into the hows and whys. The best, and intended, response is to delve in, futilely try to absorb the sun-warmed muted colour palette by osmosis, and get cosy in the dry heat of memories.