Latest updates: 31 January 2010

The really exciting bit! Animals That Swim have been working on some demos! Real life demos! And Wikipedia contributor 81.142.179.137 (and I'd gladly bet a fiver on the identity of that person, considering their other edits) says they're planning an acoustic EP. So what better time to update and generally spruce up the site? Admittedly, "how about two flippin' years ago, ye lazy get?" is a perfectly valid answer to that one. Anyway, with a bit of luck and application there will be some new stuff up within the next week. Or so. I've already typed up the lyrics to forty-odd songs and I'm getting them all cross-referenced and stuff; also there will be new bits 'n' bobs in the archive and... oh, all sorts of goodies. Well, actually, just the things I've already mentioned. But it'll be worth the wait, almost.

Meanwhile, I'm sure everyone now knows that Vic Chesnutt died on Christmas Day. Vic was of course the Vic in ATS's song, er, "Vic". I'm no good at writing obituaries, so I will point you toward his Wikipedia entry instead. There also is a memorial fund set up by Kristin Hersh to help his family with the medical bills.

About 20 or so years ago, or thereabouts (we're not talking absolute chronological precision here), two brothers from the London suburbs formed a band. Hugh Barker played a guitar, while Hank Starrs (who'd adopted his girlfriend's surname because it was "better" than his own) sang and played drums. And then they got some more people in, wrote some songs about life in unremarkable little English towns, played some gigs (often in precisely the same sort of unremarkable little English towns they'd written songs about), made some records and the rest is history.

Well, not quite. Because somewhere amidst the melancholy, the celebration of life's little pleasures, and the transcendant trumpet solos, Animals That Swim missed one key element. They neglected to get world-famous. They didn't even have a website. What band doesn't have a website? The answer: This band (Animals That Swim) didn't have one (a website).

And since that's just not on, and since I happen to quite like Animals That Swim, I've knocked up a little website in tribute to a little band who were quite good. It's a bit shoddy, but it's got a discography with pictures of all the sleeves, yes, that's right, all the sleeves, and some blurb about the history of the band, and some links. So read on...