Swervedriver

While their contemporaries focused lyrics on idle fantasies, blossoms, and sea swells, the shoegaze originators Swervedriver anchored their otherworldly guitar textures and gleaming, eddying sonics to themes of automobiles, unease, and flight. Their first period during the nineties yielded key landmarks in the genre’s evolution, most notably the 1991 debut album Raise and the 1993 successor Mezcal Head. After splitting in 1998 the quartet resurfaced ten years later, launching a run of comeback shows before pushing their propulsive brand of shoegaze further with fresh recordings such as the 2019 album Future Ruins.

Adam Franklin and Jimmy Hartridge formed Swervedriver in Oxford, England, in 1989 alongside bassist Adi Vines and drummer Graham Bonner. Blending shoegaze’s eddying atmospheres with classic pop structures, the quartet first appeared on the sterling EPs Son of Mustang Ford, Rave Down, and Sandblasted, then delivered their opening full-length Raise in 1991. Following an American trek backing Soundgarden, Bonner exited, soon trailed by Vines; the 1992 EP Never Lose That Feeling, their most commanding work yet, initially seemed to close the chapter. Yet Swervedriver resurfaced in 1993, with Franklin and Hartridge joined by drummer Jez Hindmarsh to unveil the second album Mezcal Head. An overseas-only set, Ejector Seat Reservation, arrived in 1995 featuring bassist Steve George. In autumn 1998 the band issued its fourth album 99th Dream, followed the next year by the Wrong Treats EP. Bonner and Vines later continued as Skyscraper, while Franklin recorded under the Toshack Highway name.

The group stayed largely dormant through the 2000s until an October 2007 announcement that Swervedriver would reunite and tour in 2008. Over the ensuing years Franklin, Hartridge, and George, supported on drums by Hindmarsh, Bonner, or from 2012 onward by Mikey Jones of Bolts of Melody and Heaven, played scattered concerts and festivals worldwide and performed on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The new single “Deep Wound” surfaced in autumn 2013, alongside word of a planned album for 2014. That project, I Wasn’t Born to Lose You, was ultimately released in early March 2015 after being trailed by the second single “Setting Sun,” marking the band’s fifth studio album and its first since 99th Dream. After the record’s arrival the quartet paused studio work for three years yet kept performing live; once a 2017 U.S. tour ended they tracked their sixth album. Future Ruins appeared in 2019 and found the group favoring bolder experimental arrangements over straightforward nods to their nineties catalog.

In 2020 Swervedriver made an alternate version of their debut EP available to the public for the first time. Dissatisfied with their initial takes on the four tracks that formed the 1990 Creation Records release Son of Mustang Ford, they quickly recut the material that became the official EP yet retained the rejected sessions. Marking the thirtieth anniversary of Son of Mustang Ford, the band issued a limited vinyl edition of those early recordings under the title Petroleum Spirit Daze; the pressing sold out at once, and three years later a wider reissue brought the material to more listeners.