French Kicks Go Swimming On New Album
Thursday May 08, 2008 @ 05:30 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

French Kicks (photo by Matthew Stinchcomb)

New York indie rockers French Kicks will release their fourth studio album, Swimming, on May 20 through Vagrant Records.

If you're a French Kicks fan and have iTunes, there's a good chance you already own Swimming, since it has been available for download since April 1. But sometimes nothing beats getting your mitts on the real thing. The disc was produced and mixed by the French Kicks — something they've "always wanted to do," according to their website — and is their second Vagrant release. You can preview "Abandon" on the band's MySpace page.

"On this record, we hoped to capture the joy of friends playing together in a relaxed way," guitarist Josh Wise says. "We used a lot of first and second takes and tried to preserve a sense of immediacy and discovery that comes from putting things down before you really have a chance to think too hard. It's bolder, and at the same time more intimate, than anything we've done."

French Kicks formed when former bassist Jamie Krents, vocalist/guitarist Nick Stumpf (then a drummer) and former vocalist/guitarist Matthew Stinchcomb moved to Brooklyn, N.Y. and met Wise. They put out two EPs before 2002's One Time Bells full-length debut. Krents left the band and Stumpf's brother Lawrence replaced him. Nick Stumpf moved from drums to vocals and keyboards and Aaron Thurston was added as the band's new drummer after 2004's The Trial Of The Century. Stinchcomb left the band a year later. French Kicks' most recent album is 2006's Two Thousand.

Here are the songs on Swimming:

• "Abandon"
• "Over The World"
• "Carried Away"
• "New Man"
• "Said So What"
• "Atlanta"
• "Love In The Ruins"
• "With The Fishes"
• "The Way You Arrive"
• "All Our Weekends"
• "Sex Tourists"
• "This Could Go Wrong"

—Kate Harper