Barry Can’t Swim: Loner
Barry Can’t Swim’s Loner is an album that doesn’t so much play as it unfolds—track by track, each piece its own small expedition into a world where electronica feels as personal as it does expansive.
It kicks off at full tilt with The Person You’d Like To Be, a track that hurls the listener into its restless orbit on the back of a blaring siren and a beat that nods to the shadowy corners of late-90s trip-hop. That urgent siren wails on into Different, a glitchy maze of warped vocals, chopped up and reshaped until they feel like echoes of themselves.
Where Loner really shines is in how every track seems to carve out its own niche. Take Kimpton, a standout collaboration with London producer O’Flynn—here the mood shifts, brightening into an upbeat groove that feels tailor-made for late afternoons and good company. But just as you settle in, About To Begin and Still Riding drag you back into the warehouse. Both tracks are playful slices of rave nostalgia, full of twitchy loops, robotic voice fragments and left-field sonic quirks—like sound effects ripped from arcade cabinets or sci-fi films.
Despite opening in a swirl of distortion and digital chaos, the record gradually finds its way to something more luminous. All My Friends is a moment of unexpected spiritual clarity, balancing looped vocals that feel near and far all at once—like a confession whispered from another room. On Like It’s Part Of The Dance, Barry Can’t Swim hits a different note entirely: carefree, loose-limbed and impossible to resist. It’s the sound of letting go, just for the sheer thrill of it.
Nostalgia is never far away on Loner. Childhood leans into it completely, all buoyant beats and simple refrains—an innocent plea wrapped in a beat you can’t help but bounce along to. By the time closer Wandering Mt. Moon arrives, the album feels like it’s come full circle. A sweeping string section lifts the finale into something cinematic, only to be gently overtaken by shards of electronica—yet the strings keep floating above it all, refusing to be drowned out.
What makes Loner so quietly remarkable is how much it communicates with so few words. Vocals appear as loops, mantras more than lyrics, but the emotions behind them feel limitless. In an age where so much music tries to say too much and ends up saying nothing, Barry Can’t Swim says just enough—and leaves the rest for us to feel.
