Animals That Swim - The Moon and the Mothership (plus interview)

Label: Snowstorm

Year of Release: 2001

Well, here's an unexpected treat. A video I must admit I didn't know even existed for Animals That Swim's single "The Moon and the Mothership" has turned up on YouTube, having been uploaded not by just any common-or-garden fan but the band's very own Del Crabtree.

By the time "The Moon and the Mothership" was issued on Snowstorm, it's safe to say that Animals That Swim's career was rather on the wane. It had never quite hit the heights of their friends and peers in the nineties in any case, but by the noughties they were playing to a hardcore group of fans and watching as each single came out to reasonable reviews rather than the raves which has accompanied their work in the previous decade - a far cry from the days when they did actually get mainstream television and radio plugs.

"The Moon and the Mothership" perhaps wasn't the best choice of single from the final album, but it's still a neat little tune nonetheless, and the accompanying video is an inventive and curious frolic through the sour old streets of London (and Stamford Hill, it would seem, round the corner from where I used to live).

Del has also uploaded a video of the band being interviewed on French television here, which might fill in some of the early blanks. Eee, something new turns up on Youtube every day.