Stream: Giant Waste of Man, ‘Swim’

Kevin Bronson on February 23rd, 2022

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Giant Waste of Man (Photo by Robin Laananen)

Giant Waste of Man is an ensemble of L.A. scene luminaries who’ve played in bands such as Black Heart Procession, Sun Drug, Summer Darling, Kissing Cousins, Facial and QunQ. They make visceral indie-rock that sacrifices nothing for conceptual heft — fans of Modest Mouse, Broken Social Scene, the ’80s in the Pacific Northwest and any number of emo-leaning rockers will want to check their 2019 album “The Politics of Lonely.”

GWOM’s new single “Swim” arrives today with stinging beauty and stream-of-consciousness lyrics weighted with existentialist wonder — a deeply introspective mini-epic informed, we suppose, by the “monsters” that visited lyricist Cameron Dmytryk while “sitting on a couch for a year.”

It’s one thing to write words like this: “And all the constructs of normality simultaneously / Make me crazy and keep me grounded / It’s exhausting / Shit, I guess that’s anxiety.” It’s entirely another to marry those words to music that feels as if you’re adrift on choppy seas but comforted by a spectacular view.

The song, released via Chain Letter Collective, features Dmytryk on vocals, guitar and Rhodes; Heather Heywood on bass and backing vocals; Brandon Hardy on drums; Scott Mercado on piano; and Benjamin Heywood on guitar and Moog.

The group has a full-length in the works, tentatively planned for the summer.

||| Stream: “Swim”