Swallow Cave drop new track "Cold Moon" via Sad Club Records.
Rising all-girl Bristolian band Swallow Cave reflect on mental health with the latest single ‘Cold Moon’ out now via Sad Club Records. Swallow Cave consists of Polly (guitar/voice), Florrie (lead guitar), Sarah (bass) and Isobel (drums). The track follows previous single ‘Nostalgia’ as championed by So Young, Bristol in Stereo and For The Rabbits, with the latter calling them “a band in a hugely promising place”! This track comes off the back of their live successes, supporting Sasami, Porridge Radio and Lazarus Kane to name a few.
‘Cold Moon’ is a single with soaring harmonies and jangly guitars, with darker overtones prevailing through. It comments on their own struggle with mental illness and excessive thoughts at night. Lead singer Polly comments:
"Cold Moon is about feeling really low and going to the darkest places in your mind, which for me is often late at night, and then the next morning feeling everything with kind of heightened senses
and disbelief that my mind could have gotten that low the night before, but then inevitably
goes back to again.”
Although the overriding theme is about a mental struggle, Swallow Cave hope that listeners will grasp on the underlying euphoric element building towards the end, and let that leave a sweet taste in their mouth.
‘Cold Moon’ was recorded with producer Ali Chant who worked previously with the likes of PJ Harvey, Soccer Mommy and Katy J Pearson. Of the recording process, Florrie notes about the freedom they were given to explore their own ideas:
“Working with Ali was really great because he was giving us room to try out all our ideas, even the silly ones, it was very loose in that way. It was kind of child-like, we explored with those innocent thoughts you get and injected some of that into the recording process.
When we had this idea of creating some abstract noise loop at the end of Cold Moon, we wanted to use the space echo and somehow make a loop with it. Ali has this beautiful piano that he recorded through a dictaphone and then played back through the space echo, and just perfectly slid into the end
bringing some intensity, it was great.”
Swallow Cave released ‘The Shoe Demos’ in 2018 before having played a live show. They had been practicing as a 3 piece band for a few months and wanted to record some of the material before playing live to get bookings for shows. The release of ‘The Shoe Demos’ lead to booking agencies contacting them to play shows, leading to them being a very up-and-coming and hyped band in Bristol. They played some shows with some temporary lead guitarists before they found Florrie to join, who was the missing piece that they had been looking for. Polly says
“These new songs were created, played live and recorded as the 4 of us and we feel like Cold Moon especially is like the song that sums us up best as a band, we all connect with the song and love
playing it live together, so it’s great to finally be releasing it!”
Swallow Cave have a vast range of influences, from Patti Smith’s poetry to David Lynch. Sarah and Izzie (bass and drums), met whilst working at an independent cinema together. The strong influence of arts and films into their work is clear. Previous single ‘Nostalgia’ was influenced by the 2011 documentary ‘Nostalgia For The Light’, a motion picture documenting the atrocities regarding dictatorship and human rights abuse in Chile that reflects on time, memory and grief. Polly mentions that they are all influenced by David Lynch:
“we have talked about how our dream gig would be in an episode of twin peaks and when we showed one of our first recordings to a friend they said it was like David Lynch on vacation and we were into that description.”
Musically, their influences range from Beach House, to 60s French Yé-Yé songs, to the Breeders. Polly states:
“ I would say that we are especially influenced by any female/non-binary artists of any genre really, as 4 women playing music it’s always inspiring to see other women or non-binary people up on
stage and releasing so much great music.”
