"...all we’ve got to show for the last year and a half is four songs."

15 June 2013 | 12:03 pm | Kate Kingsmill

Them Swoops frontman Dave McGann explains how they’re taking the slow road to North American stardom

In the year and a half since Them Swoops have been a band, they have never quite had their timing right. Just when the nation's youth broadcaster latched on to their Phoenix-sounding track Work Around It and put it on rotation, not only did their drummer leave the band but their new management decided the track needed to be remixed in the States. “That just held up everything,” tells guitarist and vocalist Dave McGann. The Them Swoops experience has been a little bit unconventional. “We didn't plan on it, but it's just the way it sort of happened.”

Being played on national radio but not having the band members to play shows, as well as being unable to release any more tracks because they were being remixed by Mark Needham in LA, the band lost momentum. In the lead-up to the launch show of their debut EP Glimmers, McGann doesn't sound nervous or excited, he sounds defeated and bored. “It just feels a bit funny that all we've got to show for the last year and a half is four songs. We know we've got so much more but it's all being saved for an album. We're wanting to get started on the album, we just want to do the same old thing that everyone wants to do.”

Recently, Them Swoops have recalibrated as a five-piece and have been playing more shows. “In the last eight months or so we've done heaps of playing around on tour, just accepting whatever comes our way. We've done a fair bit of interstate stuff, and it feels like we've put in the hard yards now,” he says.

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