Despite Yourself is the second and final studio album released by the English rock

Rock music

Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...

 band Headswim

Headswim

Headswim was an indie-rock band formed in Essex, England by Daniel Glendining and his brother Tom Glendining , along with their friends Clovis Taylor and Nick Watts . The band had previously been known as Blinder but changed their name in 1992.-History:The band’s early sound was influenced by...

. The album was issued by Epic Records

Epic Records

Epic Records is an American record label, owned by Sony Music Entertainment. Though it was originally conceived as a jazz imprint, it has since expanded to represent various genres. L.A...

 on 2 September 1997 in the US and on 18 May 1998 in the UK and the rest of Europe, and spawned two singles for the band, "Tourniquet" and "Better Made". The album's musical style showed a marked change from the hard rock

Hard rock

Hard rock is a loosely defined genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage rock, blues rock and psychedelic rock...

/grunge

Grunge

Grunge is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged during the mid-1980s in the American state of Washington, particularly in the Seattle area. Inspired by hardcore punk, heavy metal, and indie rock, grunge is generally characterized by heavily distorted electric guitars, contrasting song...

 of the band's earlier work towards a more personal, alternative rock

Alternative rock

Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...

 sound (partly influenced by the death of the Glendinings' brother Matthew from leukaemia in 1994), which drew comparisons to Radiohead

Radiohead

Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...

.

Although the album reached No. 24 in the UK Albums Chart

UK Albums Chart

The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...

, it did not sell as well as hoped and Epic dropped the band soon after its release.

Track listing

Headswim

• Daniel Glendining – vocals
  Singing
  Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
  
  , guitar
  Guitar
  The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
  
  
• Tom Glendining – drums
  Drum kit
  A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
  
  
• Clovis Taylor – bass
  Bass guitar
  The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
  
  
• Nick Watts – keyboards
  Keyboard instrument
  A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
  
  , cello
  Cello
  The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
  
  

Additional musicians

• Catherine Browning – violin
  Violin
  The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
  
  
• Ian Burdge – cello
• Matthew Taylor – violin
• Rebecca Ware – viola
  Viola
  The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...
  
  
• Cheryl Enever – cello
• Michael Gray – violin
• Vincent Greene – viola
• Adrian Smith – violin

Technical personnel

• Steve Osborne – producer, mixer
• Adrian Bushby – recording and mix engineer
• Stylorouge
  Stylorouge
  Stylorouge is a graphic design studio currently based in Shoreditch, London. Formed by creative director Rob O'Connor in 1981, it is notable for creating record sleeve designs for bands such as Blur, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Stereophonics, Killing Joke, Sandie Shaw, Adam Ant, Catatonia, Jesus...
  
   – sleeve design
• Chris Floyd – photography
  Photography
  Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...