Blowin' Cool
Swervedriver revs into high gear at the Music Box
The overriding mood seemed to confirm that this was indeed a good time for the English band Swervedriver to do a comeback tour. The Oxford-based Brits – apart and yet a part of the shoegazing movement of the ’90s – released four albums in a decade-long career, and were known as the genre’s speed-freaks. Raise (1991) and especially Mezcal Head (1993) were gravel-spitting excursions … highway rock and psychedelia and adolescent longing all wrapped up into a seriously heady brew.
Openers Xu Xu Fang and Film School were welcomed without much fuss, yet another indication of an audience that seemingly hadn’t been out in a while. There was none of the usual impatience that occurs when a crowd isn’t in the mood for anything new. So the Angelo Badalamenti/Julee Cruise-styled “David Lynch music” of XXF and the drone-rock histrionics of Film School were absorbed without fuss.
The Swervedriver that actually walked out on stage was, of course, no longer the same scruffy, passionate crew of youthful scamps it was back then. Leader Adam Franklin’s dreadlocks are long gone (nowhere to hide), replaced by a neat beard and short hair. The rest of the band – guitarist Jimmy Hartridge, bassist Steve George, and drummer Jez Hindmarsh – were lanky, amiable, and silent, as career musicians generally are.
As ever and always, Franklin’s lyrics evoked impatient wanderlust, a world where a chance encounter on the train or hitchhiking in a new land was living life to the fullest. And if you had a car, even better: “The sea stretched for miles/ I drove all the while …” as a line from “Sandblasted” went, a tune that probably should have been saved for an encore, along with “Duel.” Both songs were played early in the set, creating a high that simply wasn’t sustainable for the duration. But Swervedriver isn’t a band you tell to pull over to the guardrail for your convenience – you’re in this with them for the long haul.
Franklin’s soft voice was virtually the same as it was more than a decade ago: That nonchalant delivery was always part of the band’s off-kilter charm, a steadying force inside Swervedriver’s storm of effects-pedal magic and ringing sonics. Well, it wasn’t really loud, though: The group’s new maturity seemed to eschew volume for precision. Sometimes the group embraced pure pop (“The Other Jesus”), or chugged into third gear for guitar rave-ups (“Blowin’ Cool”), but it was really at its best when Franklin seemed most vulnerable. The Mezcal Head burst of nostalgia, “Girl on a Motorbike,” was a rarely aired surprise which saw him singing as sweetly as he ever had, even with a forlorn melancholy.
And then came the vanishing point, as they slowly faded from view with the trio of “Rave Down,” “Son of Mustang Ford” and the slow-burning “Duress.” Squinting into the distance, their taillights dimmed then disappeared. Gathering its belongings by the side of the road, a generation exited for its long trek home.
Published: 06/04/2008
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