Sentimental Porno By SWIMM

SWIMM | Sentimental Porno | Rating: 7.5/11 |

Release Date: June 5, 2018

For some four years SWIMM has been a charming gem within Los Angeles’ creative space: a band with an indie-rock bend that flirted with the psychedelic, the soulful and the just plain weird. Two EPs and some life lived later, co-founders Chris Hess and Adam Winn along with Hany Zayan and Marton Bizits have embraced the sensual, funk-filled quirks that have always lined the underbelly of their music and now they have a full album to show for it: Sentimental Porno.

And it’s some of the gentlest intimate chaos that you’ll ever experience, especially considering how Hess wraps his tremulous and wiry voice around the lyrics that come off as poetic love(lorn) letters. It’s music that feels (emphasis on “feels”) like song sketches Prince might draft while luxuriating in a Saturday night bubble bath with a bong and champagne flute full of LaCroix. A gooey, androgynous bowl of shimmery sexual questing and testing, trial and error, reflection and making it up as you go along.

Eight of the 11 songs (such as the aching trio “Uh Huh,” “Speak Politely” and their staple take on Ready For The World’s “Love You Down”) are fantastic familiars that have been released over the past year but we’re not mad at there only being three new tunes to delve into: that those 8+ songs are compiled into a neatly naughty little package for unified consumption is the thing. Album opener “First Time” is a slinky set up to get you closer, emotionally skin to skin, for the duration of the 44-minute ride and that’s the point. Singles are perfectly fine but are often as ephemeral as a one-night stand: an album can set an enduring mood and get your mind off in the long term.

Sentimental porno, indeed.

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