Swivvel Navigates Complex Emotions on New EP

After charming the local music scene with catchy melancholic tunes on 2023's Passerby, Swivvel is back with its sophomore EP, In Between the Lossless Dreams, exploring deep themes of forgiveness, nostalgia, and distance. Ahead of the EP's April 18 release, Swivvel has released the ballad "Last Dance."

The new record marks the first project the full band — Jonathan Solis (lead vocals and guitar), Nestor Rigaud (guitar), Jean "Doodles" Dominguez (bass), Mitchell Mattox (drums), and Jordyn Paige (backup vocals and synth) — has worked on collectively since forming in 2020.

"Swivvel was formed from another band called Birthday Wish, a local Miami band that played for a few years," Solis tells New Times. "We just had so much rotation of members that it just kind of didn't feel like the same project anymore."

Swivvel coalesced as Solis and Rigaud found themselves writing material that differed from Birthday Wish's sonic palette. Soon after, they recruited other musicians to join the project.

"It was cool taking all of the musicians that not only we've trusted each other's musical choices but also that we were familiar with as people," Solis adds.

In 2023, Swivvel relocated to a remote cabin in the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina, to focus on writing new music away from the distractions of their hometown of Miami. With a makeshift recording studio in the cabin, the band recorded the foundation of the four tracks that make up In Between the Lossless Dreams.

"It's our Big Pink album," says Doodles, likening Swivvel's time in Asheville to the period when folk-rock band the Band lived and wrote alongside Bob Dylan in the basement of a pink house in upstate New York for its debut album, Music From Big Pink.
After the sessions in Asheville, the quintet returned to South Florida and continued refining the tracks, rewriting and rerecording certain sections and adding new elements. The process was especially challenging for Solis, who works as a teacher and suffered from throat issues as the project came together, delaying the recording of his vocals.

"They injected a steroid into my throat, and it was so painful, but it gave me my voice back. I suffered so much on my end, in my one-fifth of this creation, and I'm really happy to see how it turned out," Solis admits. "There was a moment where I was like, Fuck! I'm never gonna finish these; I feel like a bad man. But we did it, and we pushed it out. It was massively existential for me."

The EP's lead single, "Last Dance," is a dreamy indie-pop track that tells the age-old story of having another shot at fixing one's mistakes before everything goes wrong. The record wears its honesty on its sleeves, with lyrics touching on themes of distance, like how, as time passes, it changes how people relate their thoughts and feelings.

"Up close, the fidelity of our feelings seems sharper but harder to understand. With distance from those sensations and time, you get clarity but maybe lose the presentness and intimacy with those feelings. The songs are kind of supposed to sit in that tension," Solis explains.

The project's title itself refers to how the band recorded these songs in the little gaps between the members' daily lives.

Although they continue to balance rehearsals with their day jobs, Swivvel plans on staying busy this summer. The band hopes to finish recording two more songs, and once Solis' school year is over, Swivvel will dive back into playing more shows in Miami with a refreshed setlist.

"We're trying to reinvent the whole set list from top to bottom; we have been playing the same songs for quite a while," Solis says. "I'm excited for the new stuff. I think everything we put out is growth forward from the last."