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Aug 06, 2024 By Andy Von Pip Photography by Ethan Porter

Bath/Bristol-based dream-pop band Night Swimming has unveiled their latest single, “Five-Year Plan,” offering fans a final preview of their debut EP, No Place To Land, which will be available digitally and on 12” vinyl starting September 27th.

The new single cements the band’s reputation as one of the UK’s most exciting new acts. “Five-Year Plan” highlights the band’s serene yet expansive sound, featuring lush electronic string arrangements and haunting guitar lines. Meg Jones, the band’s vocalist, delivers her poignant lyrics with raw emotion, capturing the pain of an abruptly ended relationship.

Meg Jones shared insights about the inspiration behind “Five-Year Plan,” stating: Five-Year Plan is about the feeling of being dropped suddenly, without much explanation, by someone you were really close to. The words were written quickly and without a lot of conscious thought, compared with our other songs. I think this captured the honesty of the difficult emotions I was experiencing at the time.

Like all of the tracks on the EP, ‘Five-Year Plan’ was recorded as a live performance to analogue tape. We recorded the songs this way to give them their own energy and movement akin to our live shows. There were minimal overdubs on “Five-Year Plan”, however we did experiment with layers such as double tracked vocals/harmonies, a synth bass and even some acoustic guitar to thicken the mix. In terms of the writing process, the track was started by Jesse bringing an arpeggio melody to rehearsal that he’d be working on, and the rest of the band fleshed it out to create the wall of sound that is heard in the recording. A few of us were coincidentally experiencing similar life events at the same time, in the middle of winter, which definitely impacted the writing process. The song switches metre from 7/8 to 4/4 which we felt provided a cathartic release to end the song.”

LIVE DATES

27 September, Rough Trade West - London (In-store)

28 September, Rough Trade - Bristol (Headline)

30 September, The Bodega - Nottingham (Headline)

14 October, The Lexington - London (supporting TWEN)

24 October, Supersonic - Paris (They’re Gonna Be Big Festival)

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