Mount Zero [CD]

A sweeping, guitar-driven road trip that recalls and reinvigorates the slowcore and alt rock of the 90s and earlyaughts, Mount Zero, the debut LP from Swapmeet, marks the moment the Australian four-piece come into their own. Following their dreamy 2024 debut EP Oxalis, Mount Zero arrives on the heels of the band's signing to LA-based label Winspear, after stirring up buzz throughout Australia, taking home awards for Best Release and Best Song ("Ceiling Fan") at the South Australian Music Awards and earning the title of 'Best Emerging Artist' at SXSW Sydney. Mingling airy sweetness with jagged surrealism, Mount Zero transmutes so many of the regrets and uncertainties of young adulthood into a burgeoning, newfound confidence. Though the members of Swapmeet often begin their songs by writing individually, the tracks on Mount Zero ended up circling common themes: first loves, first heartbreaks, first embarrassments, first disasters. As they've done since their earliest days as a band, Swapmeet traded instruments throughout Mount Zero and shared production duties as a foursome, developing their sound by layering dozens (sometimes hundreds) of tracks within each song, then carefully removing elements until the production took a clear shape. The result is a record where Swapmeet bottle up the tooth-gritting intensity of feeling yourself change at the cellular level under reality's unyielding pressures. It's a tribute to all the lives that can never be lived, all the paths that will never be followed-and an ode to the one that lies just ahead, too.