The Swimming Pool Q's - Deep End Press

Royal Academy of Reality

Royal Academy of Reality is an ambitious and successful summer blockbuster of a release...a sexy tour de force...glorious odes to the solar system. It's an anthem of the sun that would bust out in blows against the empire if anyone had the energy to launch a wooden ship, much less a rocket.

--VILLAGE VOICE

Possibly the most progressive American rock record of the new century. It sets an artistic standard few bands will be able to match.

--THE STATE

Overflowing with musical and intellectual ideas...flat-out astonishing.

--WIRE U.K.

Pocket symphonies of silvery guitar and warm-water singing: Abbey Road wrapped in kudzu.
--ROLLING STONE

A lavish record that's as cryptic as R.E.M. and as expansive as The Flaming Lips...warm and humane rather than aridly cerebral...their time may have come. 4 STARS.
--Q MAGAZINE U.K.

A gorgeous disc from a unique band that has been out of action too long.
--WASHINGTON POST

GRADE: A: Repeat listenings of Reality yield countless new pleasures.
--ATLANTA JOURNAL

A sprawling 70-minute voyage into deep space.
--CREATIVE LOAFING

The striking scale and superb craft of this album are impressive by any standard.

--ALL MUSIC GUIDE

This is one terrific album...a spectacular sound, one that overflows with sheer exuberance and invention...a strikingly original piece of work, and proof positive that in the grand tradition of Sgt. Pepper and Dark Side of the Moon, imagination and ambition are still vital ingredients when it comes to making music that really matters.
--SOUTH FLORIDA'S ENTERTAINMENT

NEWS & VIEWS

A rock and roll Gravity's Rainbow.
--AMPLIFIER

Exquisitely crafted songs [that] burst on the ear with the sudden force and electric sizzle of an August thunderstorm. Others open like furled flower buds, petal by petal, with imagery that's both winsome and passionate.
--TALLAHASSEE DEMOCRAT

Administration

Deep End Press > Pulse (1)

Pulse

Pulse!-Tower Records Music Monthly

The Swimming Pool Q’s--The Deep End

by David Greenberger

(DB) There’s no shortage of early-‘80s indie releases that now wobbly resonate with either nostalgic quaintness or full-blown annoyance. The reappearance of the debut by the Swimming Pool Q’s shows that the bothersomely labeled new wave years did indeed foster some vital and lasting works. The set’s original 11 tracks are joined by a full dozen more, with everything delivering a sonic wallop missing from the 1981 vinyl. One of the finest bands to come out of Atlanta, the Q’s were as unaligned with the collegiate strum bands from Athens as they were with the earlier crop of Macon-based boogie-mongers. Jeff Calder’s songs mix confident literary poetics with a journalist’s eye for local color. His vocals, full of bluster and character, contrast perfectly with the sweet melodic ache and mysteriously spiritual resonance of Anne Richmond-Boston. And all the while guitarist Bob Elsey uses his prodigious chops to create a crazy stew of dada-blues angularity mixed with surreally twisted stadium-rock stances.

Pulse! September 2001