Swervedriver: Part 2

Click here for Part 1.

After the crushing bad luck of getting dropped by their label the week of their record release, more misfortune followed. American major Geffen Records scooped them up at the tail end of the '90s indie rock bubble, which saw major labels impulsively signing everything from Urge Overkill to Shudder to Think to Jesus Lizard. Initially this was a boon, and Swervedriver pocketed a big enough advance to build their own studio, at which they began recording a new album with Moulder, 99th Dream (they gave up on trying to do anything proper with Ejector Seat). But as the bubble burst, well-meaning A&R people, like the lady that brought Swervedriver to Geffen, got sacked. And when she did Swervedriver were left label-less again. Fortunately Geffen weren't assholes about it and let Swervedriver reaquire the master tapes to their new record without too much pain. But by the time they found somebody to put 99th Dream out - New York indie Zero Hour - it was stale material, since almost two years had passed since its creation. It gets worse. Zero Hour released 99th Dream in the Spring of '98 and within the year, while the band were still touring to promote it, the label folded.

At this point the band must have felt like the fates had a personal vendetta against them. Somewhere in the middle of their Australian tour for 99th Dream, Franklin says they felt lost and ran out of steam. What makes it so depressing is that they were at their creative peak, but too many unhappy coincidences just beat them into submission. The band slipped into a coma.

99th Dream is astounding in places. It has some of the most accomplished guitar interplay of anything they ever did (when I try to think of an example of Swervedriver at their most Television-glorious, I think of "Up From the Sea" or "In My Time," both from 99th Dream) and Franklin had almost completely given himself over to writing pop songs, rather than instrumentals that happened to have vocals. Single "These Times" could have been on Oasis' What's the Story, Morning Glory. I bought 99th Dream the day it came out - a now-dead tradition - and when I got back to my room and put it on, the opening title track was so goddamn beautiful I had to sit down. I mean, just read these lyrics:

One day we'll work the world without these stimulants/ And as thought bubbles form above you/ You know that I have always loved you/ I love your ways/ I love your little ways/ I love your ways

Somewhere up in the sky the Hindenburg still flies/ You're still flying from the night before, last night the big score/ As we lie half in traction and in stereo start to dream/ Architecture, nature, alcohol, space travel, rock n roll

Shop windows at night and endless possibilities/ The mannequin's blank face reflecting how you feel/ So glamorous and surreal/ It's a thin veneer and something's got to give out here/ I'm dreaming number 99/ Get me to the world on time

Swervedriver - "99th Dream" [From 99th Dream]

Swervedriver - "Wrong Treats" [From 99th Dream]

As a Swervedriver aficianado, their demise was a relatively painless one for me since Franklin plowed ahead releasing solo material - first under the alias Toshack Highway and later under his own name - that conjured the same images in my head, only scaled down and more portably intimate. I'm going to do a post soon on just this material as well as Franklin's new project with Interpol's Sam Fogarino, Magnetic Morning.

A few years ago I did something a little unconventional, but also obvious and pure. Feeling that there was relatively little material available on the Web or otherwise about the making of these Swervedriver albums that I had spent so much love on ingesting in detail, I decided to just ask Franklin everything I wanted to know. So I set up an interview for the recording magazine Tape Op. (Our interview will be published in next month's issue.) Over the course of two evenings and over six hours of phone conversation, I pumped Franklin for stories. It was one of the most inspiring experiences of my life, not because it was like winning the geek-out lottery, but because Franklin was all about the music. He was gracious and charming and happy to talk about anything I wanted. He wasn't living in the past, and we spent a lot of time covering the then forthcoming Bolts of Melody, but he had tons of affection for the music that Swervedriver made and, in some ways, seemed like their biggest fan. It's hard to explain that last part, but it was as if he didn't have the luxury of distancing himself from the greatness he had achieved, because that music hadn't been validated by the superficial watermarks of record sales or even a gushing and pushy critical ubiquity. If someone like Thom Yorke or Kevin Sheilds wanted to talk dismissively about their earlier work, they could afford to: in Yorke's case that work is paying for his house and still being poured over in the present by thousands of new fans every year; and in Sheilds', the early material, while merely still an underground phenomenon, has been cast in bronze by now and formed in statuesque rock legend. I felt that Franklin doesn't have either security to fall back on, and so he holds a balanced, forgiving and proud view of a decade's worth of blared passion.

If you want to start somewhere, you can't go wrong with Juggernaut Rides, Castle Music's 2005 2-CD Swervedriver anthology. As someone with starched opinions about this band, who's devotedly collected their singles and 7-inches over the years, I couldn't believe how right they got it. The remastering engineer nailed making a warm coherence out of sometimes wildly different-bodied recordings - no easy feat considering that the decade the band was active was also the age of the Loud Race, where the competition to have the most compressed mix drove the industry standard into increasing harshness. Juggernaut Rides has all the key cuts from the four proper albums - I couldn't have picked them better myself - as well as just about every b-side worth owning. Which is not to say that moving on to the records themselves would be redundant. It wouldn't, and if you do, start with Mezcal Head and Ejector Seat, which have aged amazingly and were without filler.

Swervedriver reunited this year to hit the summer tour circuit. Nobody's saying if there will be new music made - it's all about the shows for now. It was a beautiful feeling to read the reviews of their Coachella performance, and see them getting the reverential treatment they deserve. They're still touring.