Swapmeet Make an Awesome Sound in Brooklyn

Swapmeet spent most of the past few months back home in Adelaide, where it was wintertime. “We’ve been hibernating,” says O’Broin (shown here getting comfortable during soundcheck). In September, they headed out for a tour of Australia and had a blast. “We did our first headline show in Brisbane ever, and that one was so energetic and fun,” Medlyn says. “That’s the first time a lot of people have sung each song back to us. That was the most mindblowing experience ever.”

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Their U.S. tour, which began in Los Angeles earlier this month and continues through this weekend, has been going well, too. “Honestly, I kind of thought we were going to get a reality check after such hype at our shows in Australia, but then these shows have been mindblowing as well,” O’Broin says. “It’s super surreal to be playing to the same amount of people that we were playing to in Australia.”

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Swapmeet (from left): Jack Medlyn, Maxwell Elphick, Venus O’Broin, and Josh Doherty. They formed the band as high schoolers circa 2020 and developed their distinctive quiet-loud sound right away.

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O’Broin greets a friendly pup outside the venue.

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Swapmeet’s members believe in eating well when they’re on tour. “It’s like a big playground of food in America,” says Medlyn, shown here grabbing a refreshing beverage at a nearby bodega. “There’s so much good food.”

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Asked about their favorite bites on the road, O’Broin rhapsodizes about the veggie burger she enjoyed at Mississippi Studios in Portland, Oregon. “It was the best thing I’ve ever had,” she says. “Ate it, played the show, came back, got the exact same thing. It was that good.”

“I’m just going to list a few things quickly,” Doherty says. “We just had Katz’s Deli pastrami sandwich. That was the highlight of the whole trip so far. Mr. Beef, the Italian beef in Chicago. Deep dish in Chicago. Portillo’s Chicago dogs.”

Baby Wave

Nashville’s Baby Wave got the night started in high gear with an energetic opening set that included their dreamy single “The Scene Has Changed” and another song that interpolates “Take Me Home, Country Roads” to great effect. (Both will appear on the band’s forthcoming debut album on Saddle Creek.)

Their sound and Swapmeet’s complement each other nicely, and the two bands bonded on tour this fall. “They’re freaking awesome,” Medlyn says. Before taking the stage in Brooklyn, Baby Wave’s Gardner Gottsegen (pictured here on drums along with Jakob Bibb, book NOT brooke, and a touring guitarist) gifted each member of Swapmeet a small bottle of maple syrup from his family’s farm in Vermont. “Waffle House is going to be our last stop on the tour, and I think we’re going to bust it out then,” Doherty adds.

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Right before they walk onstage, Swapmeet make a game-time decision about which song to start with. “We change up the first song depending on the vibe, if people are ready to party or not,” O’Broin explains. “If it’s a more chill vibe, we start with ‘Ceiling Fan.’ But if it feels like we’re ready to go, we’ll start with ‘Sand.’” On this night at Baby’s, they began with “Sand,” and O’Broin smiled to see the crowd singing along.

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The rest of the set follows more or less the same order each night, due to the band’s practice of switching instruments midway through. “There’s lots of orders of songs we would like to do, but the physical limitations of the swaps means there’s literally only two or three ways we could do it,” O’Broin says wistfully. “We’ve daydreamed about doing it differently.”

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The big switch happens a few songs in, when Elphick gets up from the drum kit and picks up a guitar, while Medlyn takes his place. “We had such a funny close call once at a gig in Sydney,” Medlyn says. “I dropped the capo on the floor just as we were switching. There’s a sample, and when the sample ends I have to start playing drums. We’re freaking out trying to find this capo. And I literally sat down on the drums as I was meant to come in. It was crazy perfect.”

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The room exploded in cheers when Swapmeet walked out onstage. “It’s like we’re welcoming everyone to our birthday party,” O’Broin says.

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O’Broin delivered a raw, emotional vocal on “My Heart Breaks II” (“I’m not the girl, I am the ache”), then got the crowd jumping with their incredibly catchy single “I Know!”

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After that, the energy in the room just kept peaking. “By the time Maxwell gets on guitar, we’ve warmed up, and that definitely feels like a second wind,” O’Broin says.

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After just a moment, the band came back out to tear the house down with an encore of “I Wish I,” a highlight from Oxalis that builds to a full-throttle scream from O’Broin (shown here backstage with a cake from their booking agent). “About 40 gigs ago, Venus was like, ‘This is the last time we’ll be playing this song,’’ Doherty says. “I think we’ve played it every show since.”

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Swapmeet are heading next to the U.K. and Europe, then back home to Adelaide, where they’ll take the month of January off and work on some new songs they’ve been stockpiling. “We’ve got like 20 demos so far,” O’Broin says. “That’s the easy part. And then we spend months squishing them and forming them.”

“We’re going to be on a squishing mission in January, for real,” Medlyn adds.