IMAGINE KEANU Reeves pulling off a De Niro-esque performance on film. Imagine the Irish rugby team living up to their supposed potential. Imagine Celtic actually managing to hold onto a one-goal lead. Surely these things cannot happen, you may think, and you'd probably be right. But the change in Essex four-piece Headswim over the past couple of years is of comparable magnitude.
Formed in 1993 by brothers Dan and Tom Glendining, along with keyboardist Nick Wattskey and Clovis Taylor on bass, Headswim first hit the headlines in 1995 for their debut (UK-only) LP Flood, which saw the band tagged "the Essex Pearl Jam". So imagine the surprise of finding the long-haired English guitar abusers freshly shorn, sporting spectacles and boasting a new album (Despite Yourself) that has more in common with Radiohead or Addict than Soundgarden.
Nick Wattskey admits that the band have undergone "quite a change in direction" since Flood. "When we started writing Despite Yourself, we spent three or four months writing songs that were very heavy, powerful guitar-driven songs, and that wasn't making us all that happy. We were spending two weeks working on one section of a song - it was just really hard work."
In time, Headswim realised that they didn't want to make a record which sounded like Alice In Chains, and so a change was needed. "It just seemed to happen," recalls Nick, and all of a sudden the band were overflowing with "killer tunes with acoustic guitar, cello, drum loops and very dry vocals, more stripped down than before."
The new, improved Headswim have been compared frequently to Radiohead, and it's not hard to hear why. The music is still guitar-driven, the themes are melancholy and the falsetto vocals often reach for the same heights as a certain Thom Yorke. "It's a bit of a pain, because when we write an album we attempt to make it sound original, so to us it doesn't sound like anyone else," stresses Nick. "We want to avoid categorisation if we can. But inevitably, everyone has to draw some comparisons, and they (Radiohead) are the ones that have been dug out. I'd rather people say 'They don't sound like anyone who's ever come out before - they're incredible'."
The Radiohead comparisons are entirely legitimate, in my opinion, but Headswim cannot be accused of contriving the emotions contained on the album just to sound angst-ridden. Many of the songs on Despite Yourself are concerned with death and loss. Matthew Glendining, brother of Dan and Tom, died of leukaemia in late 1994, at the tender age of 19, which obviously had an enormous effect on his brothers, and on the entire band.
"Dan writes all the lyrics, and I think it was quite cathartic for him in a way," states Nick. "It helped him to just write how he feels from the head and the heart. I think for him it was quite a good way of getting it all out."
Despite Yourself was produced by Steve Osborne, knob twiddler on the Happy Mondays Pills, Thrills And Bellyaches album, which is in Headswim's collective Top Ten. It was released initially in America, where the band have been on tour for most of the last year. The reaction they received has been very encouraging, to say the least.
"In America you can go into any bar and watch someone play and they're going to be amazing musicians. In the UK, there's a weird backlash - if you can actually play your instrument, they don't like you. It's like a reversion of snobbery," muses Nick.
Back at home, though, the first single from the album, the excellent 'Tourniquet', did give Headswim their first Top 30 hit, and a subsequent appearance on Top Of The Pops. When I was 18 everyone always asked, 'How's your band doing? When are you going to be on Top Of The Pops?' Now I've been on it. It was quite surreal, hanging around all day and then you're on stage for three or four minutes, but it was exciting."
Headswim have taken five years to get to achieve their Next Big Thing status, steadily honing their sound, and their live show has been ecstatically received in most quarters. You can judge for yourself how far they've come when they play the Limelight in Belfast on June 8th and the Temple Bar Music Centre on the 9th. n