TEDDY SWIMS: I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 2) (Atlantic)
Verdict: Heartfelt storytelling
From Taylor Swift’s Eras tour to Charli XCX’s ‘brat summer’ and the rise of Chappell Roan, the music of 2024 was dominated by women.
That wasn’t the whole picture, though: of the UK’s five best-selling singles, four were by male solo artists – Noah Kahan, Benson Boone, Hozier and Teddy Swims – with Sabrina Carpenter (thanks to Espresso) the sole female on the list.
It’s a phenomenon that looks set to continue in 2025, with the bearded and tattooed Swims leading the way.
Operating on the cusp of pop and soul, the American singer broke through last year with Lose Control, a sensitive ballad about addiction and turmoil. His career has since picked up real momentum, with an arena tour in March and today’s arrival of his second studio album.
The 32-year-old from the Atlanta suburbs made his first foray into music when he posted covers of Shania Twain’s You’re Still The One and Michael Jackson’s Rock With You on his YouTube channel.
Born Jaten Dimsdale, he adopted the surname Swims – an internet acronym for Someone Who Isn’t Me Sometimes – so that he could sing in character, with Teddy his childhood nickname. Despite the persona, he’s made his no-holds-barred honesty his calling card.
As its title suggests, I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 2) is a continuation of his 2023 debut album. His regular backroom team, including Nashville-based co-writer Mikky Ekko and former One Direction collaborators Julian Bunetta and John Ryan, are back on board, and the 13 songs here again find Swims wearing his heart on his (tattooed) sleeve, while making the most of his powerful, blue-eyed soul voice.
There’s now greater nuance, though: Swims hasn’t quite banished the demons that fuelled his debut, but the overall mood is more upbeat.
Teddy Swims performs onstage at Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2025 in Los Angeles, California
Swims starts a UK tour on March 3 at Utilita Arena, Birmingham
His confessional style can border on the melodramatic. ‘Fake tears can never stain quite like the real ones,’ he sings on opening track Not Your Man, but his emotional delivery is blunted by an overwrought arrangement. His influences are sometimes too obvious – It Ain’t Easy’s guitar sound and drum loop stray close to Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams.
He’s at his best when he plays the anguished soul man. He says the ‘everything but therapy’ line was inspired by his inability to deal sensibly with ‘the stuff life throws at you’, and he runs through a range of soulful styles in his search for answers: glossy balladry on Your Kind Of Crazy; easy-listening on the nostalgic Northern Lights; crisp pop on the yearning single Bad Dreams.
Alongside his more retro leanings, he ventures into modern R&B, summoning an impressive cast of guests in doing so. The love song Are You Even Real is a duet with Californian singer Giveon, while there are spots for female vocalists Muni Long and Coco Jones, plus rapper GloRilla – cameos that give his music a welcome contemporary sheen.
Having unflinchingly documented his growing pains, he’s now looking forward. Swims and his girlfriend, singer-songwriter Raiche Wright, announced earlier this month that they were expecting a child together, with the baby due in June, and he sings of how he was saved by the love of a good woman on She Loves The Rain, an acoustic ballad that captures his knack for big, soulful vocals and heartfelt storytelling.
Maybe domestic bliss and fatherhood will help him find inner peace. On a musical level, things are going swimmingly.
FKA TWIGS: Eusexua (Young Recordings)
Verdict: Enigmatic star hits the dancefloor
Enigmatic singer FKA Twigs is hard to pin down. A former dancer who appeared in Kylie Minogue and Ed Sheeran videos, she takes chances where others play it safe. Her 2014 debut album, LP1, explored futuristic R&B; 2019’s Magdalene offered bewitching piano ballads and breakup songs, seemingly inspired by the end of her engagement to actor Robert Pattinson.
Now the artist born Tahliah Barnett in Cheltenham is heading for the dancefloor. In typical Twigs fashion, though, it’s not as simple as that. Eusexua, inspired by the techno music she heard in nightclubs while shooting a film in Prague, is an experimental affair.
There’s also a concept. Of course there is. ‘Eusexua is a state of being,’ says the 37-year-old. ‘A feeling of momentary transcendence often evoked by art, music, sex and unity.’ Even Twigs admits the notion is nebulous, but she does her best to evoke feelings of escape and euphoria on a series of electronic numbers made largely with regular collaborator Koreless, the pseudonym of musician and DJ Lewis Roberts.
FKA Twigs plays Aviva Studios, Manchester, on March 18, and Magazine, London, on March 21
‘I was on the edge of something greater than before, but nobody told me,’ she declares on the album’s dreamy title track. On Perfect Stranger, she sings of her desire to preserve an element of mystery in a new relationship. ‘I don’t know the name of the town you’re from, your star sign, or the school you failed,’ she sings. ‘I don’t know, and I don’t care.’
There are some intriguing guests. The heavily auto-tuned Drums Of Death is built around a sample from K-pop rapper G-Dragon’s 2012 single One Of A Kind; the hypnotic Keep It, Hold It features a choral quintet; and the album’s one dance-pop banger, Childlike Things, has a verse in Japanese by North West, 11-year-old daughter of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian.
Sung in a breathless soprano, closing track Wanderlust is another highlight. Co-written by Stuart Price and co-produced by Marius de Vries, both of whom have worked with Madonna, it harks back to the queen of pop’s electronic ballads. Twigs’s risk-taking makes Eusexua a hit-and-miss affair, but her desire to create something fresh is admirable.
- Teddy Swims starts a UK tour on March 3 at Utilita Arena, Birmingham. FKA Twigs plays Aviva Studios, Manchester, on March 18, and Magazine, London, on March 21 (both ticketmaster.co.uk).
BEST OF THE NEW RELEASES
MAC MILLER: Balloonerism (Warner)
There’s an introspective feel to the second posthumous album (after 2020’s Circles) by Pittsburgh musician and rapper Miller, who died from an accidental drug overdose in 2018. Some of these songs are no more than sketches, with last year’s Glastonbury headliner SZA a ghostly vocal presence on DJ’s Chord Organ. But their raw, unpolished edges, with Miller’s original demos left untouched by studio trickery, add poignancy. Tomorrow Will Never Know is all ambient, new-age sounds; 5 Dollar Pony Rides, mellow and laid-back, is a highlight.
MARY CHAPIN CARPENTER, JULIE FOWLIS & KARINE POLWART: Looking For The Thread (Thirty Tigers)
Similar in spirit to Trio and Trio II, the collaborative records made by Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris in 1987 and 1999, this harmony-soaked album pools the talents of Americana stalwart Carpenter and Scottish artists Fowlis and Polwart. Conceived in lockdown, and brought to life after the singers played 2023’s Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow, it’s a mix of Gaelic sounds and modern folk, with Carpenter penning Satellite – about a ‘zombie spaceship’ – and the superb A Heart That Never Closes.
IGGY POP: Live At Montreux Jazz Festival 2023 (earMUSIC)
A jazz festival might seem an odd fit for the godfather of punk, but he sounds fully at home in Montreux’s Stravinski Auditorium. Backed by a tight band, with a stunning brass section, Iggy excels on a career-spanning set that includes Stooges classics I Wanna Be Your Dog and Search And Destroy plus solo hits. The horns add raunch to Nightclubbing. The Passenger becomes a mass singalong. Now a septuagenarian, he’s still a phenomenal live performer. Out as a double vinyl LP (£35) and CD/Blu-ray (£20).
JOHANN PACHELBEL: Magnificat II (CPO)
This CD will give you a different view of Pachelbel, widely known for just one piece, his Canon. It is the second disc devoted to his settings of the Magnificat and even better than the first, with members of Himlische Cantorey singing his superb five-part textures. Jan Kobow directs and sings tenor, as the Hamburg ensemble brings us two Magnificats and three motets. Bass Joel Frederiksen has a motet to himself and firmly underpins the little chorus; soprano Veronika Winter also gets a motet. It is astonishing that Pachelbel wrote so much, so well.
Tully Potter
