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MUSIC

The Swimmers

A Philly band skips a couple of grades on its way to graduation.

By Katherine Silkaitis

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Mar. 10, 2009

Photo by Michael Persico

Listen to the Swimmers on our Umm...Drop podcast.

When the Swimmers started in 2005 they skipped a couple grades in a band’s usual life. “We started recording first,” says frontman Steve Yutzy-Burkey. “I thought the way to get taken seriously was to have a record before you play live shows, to start from a higher level. It sort of worked in the beginning.”

The Swimmers streamed their first album, Fighting Trees, through their website as they shopped it to labels. They eventually settled on Philadelphia-based, Drexel-run MAD Dragon, and Trees was officially released in March of last year.

As they prep for their sophomore album, Yutzy-Burkey says the band is again going about things differently.

“We’re planning on self-releasing it, so I’d like to just put it up immediately and stop this waiting around for labels and ‘record releases’ and other things. I just want to finish it and get it out and start working on the next thing,” he says.

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The new material, which Yutzy-Burkey hopes to release in April, is a departure from the upbeat, poppy harmonies that characterized Fighting Trees.

“I sort of hope that half the people that liked the last record don’t like the next one, just because I don’t want it to sound the same,” he explains. “I feel the last record was kind of safe in a lot of ways and we’re just trying to get away from that and not be as held back by trying to make a polished studio record.”

Part of not playing it safe means fooling around with electronics. “We’re working to a nice integration of electronic and computer-generated sonics with live stuff now,” says Yutzy-Burkey. “We started playing with a track, and doing more interesting sounds that can’t be reproduced by four people on a stage.”