Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
The creation of Singapore pop artist Linying’s sophomore album Swim, Swim came together over the course of a year on the remote Filipino island of Siargao. The dive that she calls the “the parallel discovery of self and femininity” happened off-and-on during her long trips to this dreamlike island. It was here, in her solitude after seasons of change and heartbreak, where an album brimming with life and longing and wonderment sprouted its legs.
When one wades through the record, the poetic and emotional side of Linying is on full display. Arguably her best quality as a musician, the confessional lyricism underneath her butter-soft vocals and wavy soundscape, causes the listener to feel like they’re swimming alongside her on this journey or paddling, or racing, or floating atop its surface. Regardless of where you are, Swim, Swim takes your hand and pulls you into this dream-pop deep-end as Linying dabbles with the uncertainties of life and all the emotions—sometimes quite ugly and confusing—that oversaturate you when navigating new realities. Yet she does this with such a creative, enduring flair that you kind of don’t want this curiosity and yearning to end by the record’s piano-driven closing ballad “Good Is Better Than Better.”
I was able to talk with Linying ahead of Swim, Swim’s release about being a solitary writer, rediscovering herself as a woman, singing into a rusting $5 mic, and more below!
Swim, Swim is your sophomore record. What do you believe has been brought to this record that wasn’t quite discovered yet on your debut record?
‘Discovery’ is a really apt word. I underwent such a profound process of change and upheaval that I for a moment thought I had become somebody else, but I think it really is just an unearthing of facets and dimensions brought to the surface through the process of making this album. “Wreckage” was a lot about fear; I had found this deep, wonderful happiness and I either pre-lamented or prophesied my loss of it. It was representative of who I was at the time: I was always looking at beautiful things through the lens of their inevitable expiration. With “Swim, Swim,” I learnt surrender, allowing, non-resistance and in a strange way, accountability. I told myself, “If you want to swim, swim.” I didn’t want to keep living in the past, the future—basically everywhere outside of the present.
2) I hear you traveled alone to the Filipino island of Siargao multiple times to get away during the period that you were putting together this album. Had you ever written music in that kind of solitude environment before? If not, how do you think it helped you create the songs and themes found on Swim, Swim?
I had actually always been a solitary writer; my education was in the humanities and so I never went to music school, never had musician friends in the years I was first starting out. This changed once I began building a career as an artist, which has made me more at ease with collaboration, but at my core, translating an experience into lyric and melodic form is still such a deeply personal process for me. The remoteness of the island and the richness of the experiences I had there allowed me to bring what needed to be said to the surface of my attention, but I think the saying was really done together with this trio of producers in L.A., where we recorded all of the music.
You’ve described the album as a “parallel discovery of self and femininity.” Can you walk me through that?
I feel like I really got to know myself as a woman in this process—when I was a bit younger, I held very universal, humanistic ideals, which can be quite secular and in some ways reject determinism, focusing more on what unites rather than differentiates us. It’s not that I don’t still hold these beliefs, I think I just leaned into my own feminine idiosyncrasies more and became more in touch with the natural world around me, with divinity; in doing so I started realising my own divine being, my own given nature. I found that my femininity expresses itself in receiving, creating, resilience and play—for the first time in my life, I saw how much power I wielded: not in direct, brute manipulation of circumstances, which is how I had traditionally thought power to mean, but in my eye for beauty, my attention to potential and my capacity for faith.
It’s cool to see that you’ve had the same creative people like Jon Graber, Brandon Benson, and Jordan Blackmon be part of your projects for years now. What do they (and the likes of Spencer Zahn + AOBeats) bring to the table that you couldn’t achieve without them—especially in creating this album?
So much! First of all, they don’t get in their heads the way I do, which is already the most helpful trait. I was classically trained in piano, so I tend to fixate on melody and disregard rhythm and form. I can also be really haphazard, especially when caught in a wave of inspiration. Brandon brings a sensitivity that keeps the music delicate, while Jordan is great with textures. Jon has an extraordinary sense for rhythm and overall dynamics, so I think we complement one another well.
How does the sound and production of Swim, Swim reflect the themes written in the lyricism? How do you believe they work together to emphasize that idea of feminine empowerment that is such a big part of the album’s makeup?
There’s a softness to everything. This is funny to think about, considering I made this album with three guys who spent half their lives playing in punk bands. One the one hand, these lyrics I’ve written are reminders to myself of my innate fortitude, but they’re all couched in such romantic, vulnerable and playful images, which I think is reflected in the production. There were many nonsensical, fun moves: whisper-singing through a rusting $5 mic that was ripped off an old telephone receiver, putting pretty pianos through crazy preamps, throwing in incriminating audio recordings from my iPhone to respect the storyline of the song, knowing no one else would ever fully hear it. For me it’s so characteristic of the feminine impulse as I understand it: subtle, instinctual, untamed, a little insane…
If you could sell someone on this record who had never even heard you as an artist, in one sentence, what would you say?
Maybe “If you want to feel like you’re floating without getting into the water…”
Which song ended up being the most challenging to create throughout the process?
Surprisingly, “Swim, Swim”—we were stuck on this song for the longest time. It was one of the first we had made, which started as a textural, formless instrumental piece made from before we had known what sonic realm the album was going to occupy. That’s another thing I love about the process of making this album; I didn’t go in saying I wanted to make a specific kind of record, or consciously take influence from another work. I just knew there were emotions latent in me that required exploration, and we’d just go into the studio each day and see where the day took us. I didn’t have an idea as to what ‘Swim, Swim’ was about as we were laying out the instrumental, so there were no real lyrics, and it wasn’t until we shelved it for 6 months and then I had a dramatic little romantic encounter in that time that the meaning of the song suddenly landed and I wrote all the lyrics in an hour on our last week of wrapping up the album.
Favorite movie as of the moment?
Your Name by Makoto Shinkai. Feeling a lot…
Swim, Swim is out now.
Find Linying on Instagram and Twitter.
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Hope Ankney | @heart_vandelay
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