First Time's A Charm: Can't Swim Set Out Their Stall On 'Fail You Again'
Tuesday, 04 April 2017
Written by Huw Baines
Could you hum the melody of the first (only?) song you wrote?
Let’s say you might remember a couple of bits and pieces if you had five minutes to think about it. Chances are it wasn’t great. Chances are you wouldn’t want it to be packaged up for release by a healthy-sized indie label. Chances are you’re not Chris LoPorto of Can’t Swim.
The band’s unusual backstory has been well documented, but here are the CliffsNotes for the late arrivers: A couple of years ago LoPorto, a drummer who’s played with bands like Trash Talk, started pulling together songs back home in Keansburg, New Jersey and eventually laid down a few demos, handling guitar and vocals for the first time. They found their way to Pure Noise, who signed Can’t Swim before they had played a show or, in truth, become a proper band. Their first EP, ‘Death Deserves A Name’, contained some of LoPorto’s earliest writing.
Those details are likely to become less eye-catching pretty soon thanks to the strength of ‘Fail You Again’, Can’t Swim’s recently unveiled debut LP. It’s not a curio, nor is it an album less interesting than its accompanying press release. It’s a confident, meticulous rock record that reaches for some major melodic highs while throwing punches to the gut. It’s a potent mix that UK fans will be able to sample up close in the coming weeks as the band hit the road with Real Friends.
“It’s funny to look back and have nothing - no songs, no ideas - and now we have a whole album,” LoPorto says. “Not to sound precocious at all, but it feels pretty great. I really love how the songs came out, I’m really proud of them and proud of my bandmates that we were able to pull this out of our ass somehow. Any pressure is pretty much gone. It’s turned into excitement at wanting people to hear it. I feel that’s the best part, to share it with other people and have them enjoy it.”
The idea of shared experience is one that LoPorto comes back to fairly regularly. His hopes for Can’t Swim are informed by his own youth and the belief that music hits hardest when it’s heard by kids looking for something that speaks to them personally. When he was growing up his uncles introduced him to a broad range of bands - one of them was a punk guy who delivered Minor Threat and Gorilla Biscuits, the other a disciple of the Cure, Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails - that can be seen in flecks throughout his music today, from the rousing goth-pop of We Won’t Sleep to his gritty vocal delivery, which isn’t all that far removed from a None More Black-era Jason Shevchuk.
“I’d like to think Can’t Swim has a wide net of people who could be attracted to it,” he says. “But it’s angsty. Now that I’m 28 it's a little funny to me that I’m writing songs for a younger crowd. In the beginning I didn’t think I’d enjoy it as much, you know? But I think it’s actually how I’d love to do this. Music is important to me now, but it’s so much more important to a younger kid, I think. The songs are pretty spread out across the spectrum. There’s some more aggressive stuff but we really try to elaborate on the songwriting and the textures. We did what felt natural. We didn’t get into it thinking we should write certain songs. We just catered to the best for that song.”
Lyrically, LoPorto makes the most of the fact that he’s a relative newcomer to encapsulating elements of his life in song. He’s quick to acknowledge that on ‘Fail You Again’ he had years upon years of untapped material to wade through and he does a fine job of funnelling ideas of loss and lingering hurt into tracks that veer from brutally (sometimes bitterly) honest to bleakly metaphorical. Amid images of crumbling walls and last confessions you have a song like Stranger, which distills the idea of feeling replaceable in a relationship into a straight-ahead hook waiting to be yelled from the front row. “Oh god, I always felt like you were such a stranger,” LoPorto sings. “From a tale of a life that I once called my own.”
“I played drums growing up and never really was much of a writer, I never wrote lyrics,” he says. “There’s a tonne of stuff that’s happened through my life that made it pretty easy to write an album. A couple of songs touch on my parents losing their house, it went into foreclosure pretty recently. There’s a lot of stuff about not having a home base, of going on tour and coming home and not having a place to go.
“The girl on the cover is the same girl as [‘Death Deserves A Name’], an ex-girlfriend of mine that I spent a lot of time with over my life. A lot of songs touch about her. And then growing up quote unquote ‘straight edge’ - I would never call myself that but I don’t really drink or smoke or anything - a lot my friends were in that same way of thinking and a lot of them chose different paths in their life recently. These are my friends and we don’t talk as much anymore just due to the differences in our life choices.”
Can’t Swim’s next move will be an interesting one. They are a proper band now and, with the recent addition of drummer Andrea Morgan and Danny Rico’s shift from behind the kit to third guitar, can carry off the complex, ambitious harmonies and arrangements that underpin the post-hardcore chug driving these songs. LoPorto, like those who’ve taken ‘Fail You Again’ to heart, is understandably excited about their future.
“I’d like to think I have a lot more in me,” he says. “I have a lot more events I’d like to touch on. I’d like to keep the idea of writing an album and having certain themes lyrically throughout, just so it feels more like a project than 12 random songs. A really big bonus is that we all come from the same place and want to do the same thing with our music, but we’re very different. We grew up listening to very different things and even in terms of musicianship, we all play differently. We’re all very diverse. I’d love to see what it does to the dynamic of Can’t Swim.”
‘Fail You Again’ is out now on Pure Noise.
Real Friends/Can't Swim Upcoming Tour Dates:
Thu April 06 2017 - MANCHESTER Academy
Fri April 07 2017 - BIRMINGHAM Asylum
Sun April 09 2017 - NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE Riverside
Mon April 10 2017 - GLASGOW St Luke's
Tue April 11 2017 - LEEDS Leeds Uni Stylus
Thu April 13 2017 - BRISTOL Thekla
Fri April 14 2017 - NORWICH Epic Studios
Sat April 15 2017 - SOUTHAMPTON Engine Rooms
Sun April 16 2017 - LONDON Electric Ballroom
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