Linying
Swim, Swim (Nettwerk)
The sophomore album from Linying, Swim, Swim emerged from a disorienting but dreamlike period partly spent living on the remote Filipino island of Siargao: a teardrop-shaped enclave known for its coral reefs and underwater caves and fantastically untamed landscape, where the Singapore-born singer/songwriter embarked on what she refers to as a “parallel discovery of self and femininity.” After first traveling to Siargao to work with a Filipina movie star seeking to break into music, the globally beloved artist returned to the island four more times over the course of a chaotic year marked by personal heartbreak and the immense upheaval of moving to Los Angeles from her homeland. As she spent countless days in solitude, writing and exploring and playing in the ocean, Linying slowly began piecing together the songs of Swim, Swim: a soul-baring yet exuberant album about meeting life’s uncertainties with courage, curiosity, and relentless imagination.
“By learning to lean into the unpredictable but also wildly beautiful landscape that surrounded me, I developed an intimacy with the part of myself that’s ruled by feeling and desire, after a lifetime of being partial to my rational mind,” says Linying. “For me these songs contain moments of rare feminine empowerment derived not from manipulating the circumstances with brute strength, but from reframing the narrative in a way that made me feel on top of it.”
Her first full-length since There Could Be Wreckage Here (a 2022 LP made with the likes of former Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla), Swim, Swim arrives nearly a decade after the breakout success of her 2016 single “Sticky Leaves”—a lovely introduction to Linying’s beguiling voice, poetic lyrics, and idiosyncratic sense of melody (an element largely informed by her deep familiarity with classical Chinese music and its use of the pentatonic scale). In sculpting the album’s gorgeously detailed form of dream-pop, she and her trio of longtime creative partners Jon Graber, Brandon Benson, and former Toro y Moi touring guitarist Jordan Blackmon (who all also contributed to her 2023 EP House Mouse) joined forces with an eclectic lineup of collaborators that includes avant-jazz composer/multi-instrumentalist Spencer Zahn (Jessica Pratt, Kimbra) and electronic/hip-hop producer AOBeats.
With all songs co-produced by Linying and mixed by Graber (an engineer who’s worked extensively with punk legends like NOFX), Swim, Swim ultimately embodies a spellbinding fluidity that closely echoes her newfound sense of surrender. “My natural tendency is to ruminate and pick everything apart, but with this album there was a constant flow of movement,” she says. “The main priority was creating something that felt good to everyone involved, and there was a rejection of logic and reasoning that felt completely new and exciting to me.”
Mainly recorded at Kingsize Soundlabs in L.A., Swim, Swim matches its free-flowing energy with a boldness of spirit born from connecting with her most unbridled self. To that end, the LP’s brooding but tender title track documents a bit of maddening romantic drama, adorning her outburst with punchy beats and otherworldly textures (with the latter built from manipulating Linying’s performance on a rickety old piano). Next, on “Blondie,” the album takes on a thrilling velocity as Linying narrates the sublimely unsettling experience of revealing your most playful and childlike side to a stranger. “It’s about a beautiful, idyllic day I spent swimming in a lagoon with someone I’d just met,” she says. “I felt so happy and light, but at the same time there was a part of me that kept thinking, ‘I’m not actually this light. You don’t know who I really am.’”
One of the more outward-looking tracks on Swim, Swim, “Dial Tone” presents a warmhearted meditation on masculinity and repression, brilliantly balancing its complex subject matter with carefree grooves and Linying’s sweetly reassuring vocal work. “That song came from thinking about the men in my life and the struggles I’ve seen them go through, like alcoholism and anger issues,” she says. “When you’re not fully in touch with yourself, you inadvertently cause hurt to the people around you, and the cycle just goes on from there.” And on the fuzzed-out and frenetic “Donovan,” Linying offers up a gloriously strange art-pop valentine to her closest collaborators on the LP. “I was thinking about the studio and how it’s housed so many big moments: me at my most fragile, my most hopeful, my highest, my lowest,” she recalls. “This album came from working through huge changes in my life and all the heavy emotions surrounding that—so much was expressed and realized, and I always felt so cared for by the people I was working with.”
As she reflects on her journey from “Sticky Leaves” to Swim, Swim, Linying notes that her new album serves as something of a full-circle moment. “‘Sticky Leaves’ is a song about faith and questioning your sense of God; it’s digging into so many questions I kept torturing myself with at the time but never really found the answers to,” she says. “Now when I look at Swim, Swim, I realize that you’re never going to figure anything out by sitting back and ruminating—it’s only from releasing control and throwing yourself into the ever-changing nature of things that you can start to find your way. The only answer is to just keep swimming.”
