poppedmusic

Swim School

Words by Amy Butcher & Photo by Rory Barnes

Scotland’s Swim School bring something fresh yet familiar with their glittering sound and impactful, high energy live performance. For those lucky enough to snag a ticket, you’ll see them at Oxford’s Truck Festival. If you get the chance to catch their set, you’re in for a right treat. 

1. How are you doing?

We are very excited to be playing at Truck Festival for the first time! 

2. Will you have any new tracks to play at Truck Festival?

We are in the middle of writing a new EP which will be released later on this year – even though the songs haven’t been recorded yet we are going to be playing some of the songs from the EP because we love them so much. We are curious to see how the crowd reacts – it is always scary but exciting playing new tunes to loads of people. 

3. If someone hasn’t seen you before, which song will best encapsulate your style?

That’s a hard question – our genre is all over the place. We love so many different genres and that is portrayed in our music. A common theme in our music is guitar – so I would class ourselves as a guitar band. We have heavy riffs in our song See Red but also have some shoegaze vibes in some of our new stuff – basically they will have to come and see us to understand.

4. Are there any other acts at Truck Festival you’re looking forward to catching?

Yeah there’s loads of amazing acts we can’t wait to see such as Inhaler, Palace, Pixey, Sorry, Alfie Templeman and Easy Life. Truck Festival lineups are always elite – every year the line up is filled with amazing big and up and coming acts.

5. What makes festival season so important to you?

Playing festivals is different from playing gigs in venues and touring. With gigs the excitement always starts later on in the day, usually after soundcheck, meanwhile at festivals the buzz starts when the festival gates open. You get the opportunity to meet more artists at festivals too which is always fun, and then once your set is over you get to watch those acts and stay and experience the festival.

6. What are your favourite memories of festivals?

Well the reason we are so excited to play is that me (Alice) and Lewis went to Truck Festival in 2018. We live in Scotland so we braved a 12 hour overnight bus to Oxford and fell in love with the festival. We spent most of our time at the Market Stage seeing all of our favourite acts and that’s the stage we are playing this year so that is why we are so excited – to play Truck has always been on our bucket list and we are getting to do that!

7. When you’re in the van on tour, who is in charge of the music?

All of us have an input, whoever is sitting in the front takes charge of being DJ and the van journey is filled with us requesting songs to that person. The range of genres that get played are a bit mental and we all have our guilty pleasure songs too which is always a laugh.

8. Are you playing any more gigs this year we should know about?

We have a few more festivals left this year, some that we are excited about include Boardmasters, 110 Above and Connect. Connect is our only Scottish festival so we are really excited for a hometown show.

Sadly, Truck Festival 2022 is now SOLD OUT. You still have a chance to grab a ticket by joining their ticket waiting list here. 

If you want to get in the mood ahead of the festivities at Truck Festival 2022, here’s a playlist we’ve put together.