Alongside hometown bros Peace, Swim Deep are one of the main musical players making Birmingham (sorry, B-Town) cool again. Mixing baggy 90s influences with big, sweet pop hooks and party vibes, Austin, Cav, Zach and Higgy have already charmed their way into 2013's list of biggest hopes with just three singles to their name.We were gonna take them to London Fields Lido for a chat, but weirdly the lido owners didn't want four kids who recently told us that they managed to get kicked out of basically every after-hours bar on an entire tour into their family-friendly pool. Buzz kills. We also tried unsuccessfully to go to a skate park and, erm, Wetherspoons, buuuuut we got there in the end.Noisey: Hey! So we were gonna make you skate around Brixton, but it turns out you don't skate. Soz about that.
Austin: Yeah, we just used to do it to get around so we could hang out in the summer and smoke a bit of weed. My mum's getting annoyed about me talking about weed. My grandma reads the NME and every time we're in there, there's something about me smoking weed. She thinks it's crack.
Whoops. On the plus side, you recorded your album in Brussels recently, right?
Austin: Mastered, tracklisting, everything sorted. It's called Together On The Moon… Nah, it's not. I came up with that, but it got rejected. It was honestly second choice. Maybe we'll save it for the third album…
Cav: You shouldn't say that cos now we can't call any of our other albums that.
Austin: Yeah, we can. It's a back-up.
And now no-one can nick it either. Obviously I'd imagine that's a pretty popular choice to name a record…
Austin: Exactly. We should name a few so no-one else can name their records that either.
Cav: "Scampi and Chips".
Austin: Yep, no-one can have that now. "Walking Into The Sun Naked", that's another one. "Together On The Moon" is the best album name though; it's probably the best album ever.
But you don't want to peak on your first album, otherwise where else do you go?
Austin: Unless you just peak again. I think I peaked when I was four. You peak whenever you want to, man.
Cav: I'm peaking now.
Austin: I peaked last week a bit. Sometimes you just wanna peak, don't you? Going on tour with these guys, you can't peak that often actually. You don't get much chance to peak.
Cav: I've peaked once.
Austin: I don't know about you Cav, but I've peaked more times than once.
Cav: Wait, what are we talking about? Did you say puke?
Austin: No, I said "peak". I was just having a laugh.
Cav: I was being totally serious.
Austin: Cav doesn't peak, he pukes. He peaks, then pukes.
Nice. So on this tour you've been opening up for Two Door Cinema Club – how's that been?
Austin: Yeah, it's been amazing. The tour was sold out before we were on the bill; no-one's bought a ticket just to see us, so it's good to see people there going nuts. We've been on at 7.30pm when Emmerdale's just finished, so you've got to get people fired up.
Higgy: When we've finished, Corrie's just started. We're in competition with the soaps.
Austin: Yeah, we are. In more ways than one.
Cav: We have to finish watching The Simpsons and then run onstage.
Austin: The Simpsons is underrated.
Cav: How is The Simpsons underrated?! It's completely rated in the right way.
Austin: I just think everyone should just watch The Simpsons every day.
Anyway… Did you get to hang out much in Brussells?
Austin: Not really. In my mind doing shit in Brussells is recording an album.
Higgy: We did go out a few times. We went out one night and it ended in tears.
Cav: We all got seriously drunk and our friend jumped off a wall and head-butted the floor from a really big height. He was knocked out for ages; he put his tooth through his lip.
Austin: He's alright now, I think he wants a gold tooth.
A normal night out. And what can we expect from the record? Any tracks you're particularly proud of?
Cav: We're proud of all the tracks.
Austin: You can't like one more than the other, even though you do. But you don't – or you can't say that you do, even if you do. Do you know what I mean? You couldn't ever tell them that, and I never speak about one track in front of the other. Then you could never play them next to each other otherwise they'd hate each other. You can't slag them off. What do you think "Honey" would think if we said 'King City" was a better track? It'd be bad vibes. Honestly though, I think the last track on the album - which is called "She Changes The Weather" - is probably the only genuine love song I've ever written, so I quite like that cos I never thought I'd write a song about a girl or some shit. But it came out really well.
Ha. OK, what activity is best suited to doing whilst listening to your record?
Cav: Bowling
Austin & Zach: Sex.
Cav: I like bowling.
Austin: Bowling for Soup? Nah, I'm gonna go with sex over bowling. Although I don't think I'd be able to find anyone to have sex with me knowing it's my record playing in the background. If they didn't know though, I'd just tell them after as a joke. It'd be hilarious.
Or kind of horrible :(
Cav: Exactly. Unlike bowling, on the other hand.
Annnnnd what do you want to achieve with the rest of your 2013?
Higgy: Get a number one
Cav: Bowling champion
Austin: I wanna learn Spanish.
All possible, thanks Swim Deep!
Follow Lisa on Twitter @lisaannewright