After a twelve-year hiatus from recording, Dave McConnell returned to the studio last year with no grand plans – just a desire to create. What began as a single session with producer Michael Bell at Start Together Studios quickly expanded into a project that needed to grow, and Good Swim (a metaphor for being lost in your thoughts) was born.
Good Swim‘s debut album The Mountains Sure Don’t Give A Damn About The Sea is an exploration of loss/hate/acceptance in the midst of a challenging and life changing health situation.
The songs visit small towns, friends that you don’t talk to any more, terrible things done in the name of tradition and god, broken relationships, gaslighting, a witch and two 18th century giants as part of my journey through the seven stages of grief over the last five years.
A Good Swim
I’m not sure if people listen to albums from back to front anymore, but I wanted A Good Swim to set the scene. Loads of my favourite records have an instrumental first track, something a bit weird/beautiful that puts you in a time and place. There was even a full version of this song with a different title and a vocal at one point, but it never made it into the studio for different reasons.
Sink Like a Stone
The default for every songwriter is to write a love song. One of the themes of this album is sort of the opposite – it’s an exploration of hate. Sink Like a Stone is a track about a relationship gone bad and how the hate that brings can poison every part of you. And it’s all your own fault.
This was the last track finished for the record. I spent a couple of months this year chasing my tail trying to find it. It’s definitely the biggest thing we’ve done. In a way it was best that it came at the end of the process as I was starting to feel a bit more comfortable with everything. I could hear the arrangement so clearly in my head, I’d be having a shower and hearing the strings or specific drum parts.
Friend of a Friend
This is a track about that friend that you don’t speak to anymore, going from being so close with someone to being estranged. It maybe doesn’t sound like it, for me it’s one of the saddest tracks on the record.
Recording this was really tricky. We tried a few times but couldn’t get the feel of the guitar part quite right. There are only one or two things on the record that I recorded at home, the guitar track on Friend of a Friend is the main one. It was originally from the demo but it had the right vibe that the track needed, sort of perfectly imperfect.
Attica
Attica is set in a return to a small town where you know don’t fit anymore. The title of the album came from Attica (”That’s the thing about the mountains, they don’t give a damn about the sea”). I suppose it’s about not caring what other people think. Letting go of worry. None of it’s going to matter in the end.
This is probably my favourite track on the record – the guitar and pedal steel on this really transformed the track and made Attica into a real place in my head.
For a While
This is a song about clinging onto a relationship even though you know it’s over, you just can’t admit it.
Gaslighting is such a modern word. It’s so descriptive. That was in my head writing this. How you can lie to yourself and other people, bending the world to suit you. Ultimately this is about sitting in the wreckage of a doomed relationship for a little while longer.
A Mark on You
This is a track about how trauma shapes us and the harm that we can do. There are different pen pictures in the verses that speak to that.
This is the closest thing to (alt) country on the record. Initially I had doubts about whether it would make the cut but once the pedal steel and guitar landed it really transformed the track.
Chasing Shadows
The idea for Chasing Shadows arrived in a bunch of bad dreams I was having last summer. At the time I was really struggling. I’d lost a lot of weight. Everything was a struggle. At its core it’s about dealing with loss and trying to find a new way to be happy. Or at least dealing with being not-happy.
This track came together out of nowhere – I was due into the studio the next day and I only really put things together the night before. I’m not used to writing under pressure (at least not anything that’s particularly good).
Sometimes tracks have one truth and a few lies in them, but Chasing Shadows is one of the tracks on the record that is completely pure – it describes exactly how I was feeling at the time.
There was a bit of pressure to add other elements in the second half of the song, but I was quite resistant to that. It was intended to be stripped back, bare and honest. Nothing else really arrives until the very end, probably not what you would do if you’re looking to get your song played on the radio but it is what it is.
Play Dead
In a literal sense, Play Dead is about being chased through the woods. At night. By a witch. Lying in a clearing, your only chance is to lie still and hope that she doesn’t see you.To be honest, the track is really about the night that I received a phone call that was life changing.
It was dark and raining and I’d been out running. I had felt weird for a while and knew something was up, my body just didn’t feel right. There was a quiver in the voice of the lady on the phone telling me I needed to check myself into a hospital right away. Aga Olek (who records as Pinsleep) and Laura McFadden played on this in one of the first sessions – I love how they really created the scene and mood for the track.
A Reminder
A Reminder is about everything reminding you of the person that used to be in love with you. A feeling, a blanket, a picture drawn on breath on a window. There are two sides to that – the things you allow yourself to remember and the selective memory that allows you to ignore what was ugly and how you were a colossal prick.
Massive shout out to Zarah Byrne-McCullough for the cello on this – I think it really elevated the track.
The Giants of Seville
This is maybe the oddest track on the record. As an exercise I thought it’d be cool to write a track about someone from history. The Giants of Seville is about Martin Van Buren Bates, a 7ft 9in tall man and his wife Anna, who was (unbelievably) two inches taller.
I thought it was really interesting the life someone so different would live in the world. What a challenge filled with sadness and yet they did such remarkable things, travelling the world and even meeting Queen Victoria.
I’ve always felt a bit like an outsider and maybe that my beat didn’t quite match that of those around me, so it’s probably a thinly veiled metaphor. As a song and an arrangement it’s probably the biggest creative leap on the album. You can tell me if it worked or not.
Blackbirds
Blackbirds is about feeling that you don’t belong. I had always felt like I knew what I was doing and that I was good at it, but when I wrote this I was in a real rut. Nothing was really working and I felt like I didn’t belong where I was.
The track stitches together different scenes/people/things/places that are out of place, into a sort of hymn. There are different ways you can close out a record – a massive anthem, a mega chorus. Blackbirds certainly isn’t that.
I loved the idea of someone listening to the record and this being the last thing you hear before drifting off into a peaceful sleep.
