Tripping with Adam Franklin of Swervedriver
My wife let slip that she doesn't always groove on me writing about music, so I know of at least one reader who might want to sit this one out. You see, Adam Franklin's in Seattle tonight at the Crocodile Cafe (he also does a free in-store appearance at Sonic Boom Records in Ballard), and I'm as happy as a little girl with a shiny new Easy Bake Oven over this news.
Unsung Rock History Lesson of the Day: In 1995 Creation Records, Britain's biggest buzz-band-harvester of a music label was busy wiping the bums of Brit brats Oasis with a wheelbarrow-full of advertising, promotion, and royalty dollars. As a result, Creation tapped out their coffers so badly that they treated a lot of other records they released around that time like the proverbial ugly stepkids in the basement. One of those albums was Ejector Seat Reservation, the third album by a scruffy quartet named Swervedriver.
Swervedriver arose in the wake of that UK music genre known as the Shoegazer scene, which crossed the drone of the Velvet Underground and the pop hooks
of the Jesus and Mary Chain with a lot of drugs in the late eighties. Shoegazers were known for their introspective onstage demeanor (hence the name) and for coaxing all manner of noise and effects out of their guitars. Depending on your predilection, shoegazer music sounded like either a swirling symphony of distortion and atmosphere, or a conventional British pop band stuck in a jarringly-noisy broken vacuum cleaner.
Anyway, unlike most of the Shoegazers with which they were lumped, Swervedriver rocked like lean and holy hell. On their first LP, 1991's Raise, they fuel-injected the shoegazer arsenal of guitar effects pedals with the directness of flannel-clad American indie rock a la Sonic Youth and Husker Du. And by the time they released their even-better follow-up disc Mezcal Head in 1993, lead singer/guitarist Adam Franklin was spiking the mix with a liberal dose of psychedelic color. The result: the closest thing to a true classic rock band that the Shoegazer era ever produced.
Ejector Seat Reservation should have been Swervedriver's breakout record. If fulfills every ounce of promise from the first two albums with a batch of incredibly strong, catchy, epic rock songs. Franklin's lyrics cover universal topics like love, suicide, self-delusion, and the meaning of life, and the music touches on familiar influences (The Beatles, T. Rex, and Hendrix among others) while still retaining its distinctive, idiosynchratic heart and soul. In short,
Swervedriver created an immortal record easily worthy of inclusion alongside Nirvana's Nevermind and U2's Achtung Baby as one of the great rock albums of the nineties. It shoulda been the soundtrack of a generation. Problem was, no one heard it.
Having exhausted their promotional budget on STD tests and booze for Oasis, Creation Records sloughed Ejector Seat Reservation into English stores with nothing more than a couple of half-page ads in some music periodicals. A week later Creation dropped the band entirely, and their finest record never even made it to the States.
Oasis, of course, continued on to success as everyone's favorite Cartoon Version of a Great British Rock Band. The nice, low-key guys in Swervedriver, meanwhile, slogged through more legal hassles to put out one more great record, 1998's 99th Dream, before quietly folding in 1999.
Listening to Ejector Seat Reservation and Oasis' contemporaneous --ouch, that's an ungainly music-nerd word--(What's the Story) Morning Glory today, I'm overcome with the feeling that I'm in some sort of Bizarro World where something somewhere went horribly awry. Somewhere in a universe of aesthetic justice, Swervedriver got the chance to fill arenas, while Noel and Liam Gallagher ended up working in the produce section at Marks and Spencer. But alas, I do not live in that universe.
Fortunately, I do live in a universe where Swervedriver's principal architect--singer/songwriter/guitarist Adam Franklin--is still carrying on. Since 2000, he's gracefully married his classicist's songwriting pen with gently cinematic electronics on his side project Toshack Highway, and in June, Franklin released an excellent solo effort that effectively bridges the gap between his ambient Toshack work and the old Swervedriver rattle and hum. It's called Bolts of Melody, and it resolutely refuses to leave my car stereo after three weeks of constant rotation.
Bolts of Melody confirms the erstwhile Swervedriver frontman's muse, with Swerve-worthy rockers like "Seize the Day" and "Shining Somewhere" resting cozily between some utterly beautiful acoustic ballads (his voice has matured into a surprisingly affecting croon). The album's relaxed, warmly psychedelic vibe makes for great trip music during these heady summer days, and it's looser and more heartfelt than anything Franklin's former labelmates Oasis have ever released. The Gallagher brothers may have gotten the arenas and supermodel girlfriends, it seems, but Adam Franklin got the dignity.
Unsung Rock History Lesson of the Day: In 1995 Creation Records, Britain's biggest buzz-band-harvester of a music label was busy wiping the bums of Brit brats Oasis with a wheelbarrow-full of advertising, promotion, and royalty dollars. As a result, Creation tapped out their coffers so badly that they treated a lot of other records they released around that time like the proverbial ugly stepkids in the basement. One of those albums was Ejector Seat Reservation, the third album by a scruffy quartet named Swervedriver.
Swervedriver arose in the wake of that UK music genre known as the Shoegazer scene, which crossed the drone of the Velvet Underground and the pop hooks
of the Jesus and Mary Chain with a lot of drugs in the late eighties. Shoegazers were known for their introspective onstage demeanor (hence the name) and for coaxing all manner of noise and effects out of their guitars. Depending on your predilection, shoegazer music sounded like either a swirling symphony of distortion and atmosphere, or a conventional British pop band stuck in a jarringly-noisy broken vacuum cleaner.Anyway, unlike most of the Shoegazers with which they were lumped, Swervedriver rocked like lean and holy hell. On their first LP, 1991's Raise, they fuel-injected the shoegazer arsenal of guitar effects pedals with the directness of flannel-clad American indie rock a la Sonic Youth and Husker Du. And by the time they released their even-better follow-up disc Mezcal Head in 1993, lead singer/guitarist Adam Franklin was spiking the mix with a liberal dose of psychedelic color. The result: the closest thing to a true classic rock band that the Shoegazer era ever produced.
Ejector Seat Reservation should have been Swervedriver's breakout record. If fulfills every ounce of promise from the first two albums with a batch of incredibly strong, catchy, epic rock songs. Franklin's lyrics cover universal topics like love, suicide, self-delusion, and the meaning of life, and the music touches on familiar influences (The Beatles, T. Rex, and Hendrix among others) while still retaining its distinctive, idiosynchratic heart and soul. In short,
Swervedriver created an immortal record easily worthy of inclusion alongside Nirvana's Nevermind and U2's Achtung Baby as one of the great rock albums of the nineties. It shoulda been the soundtrack of a generation. Problem was, no one heard it.Having exhausted their promotional budget on STD tests and booze for Oasis, Creation Records sloughed Ejector Seat Reservation into English stores with nothing more than a couple of half-page ads in some music periodicals. A week later Creation dropped the band entirely, and their finest record never even made it to the States.
Oasis, of course, continued on to success as everyone's favorite Cartoon Version of a Great British Rock Band. The nice, low-key guys in Swervedriver, meanwhile, slogged through more legal hassles to put out one more great record, 1998's 99th Dream, before quietly folding in 1999.
Listening to Ejector Seat Reservation and Oasis' contemporaneous --ouch, that's an ungainly music-nerd word--(What's the Story) Morning Glory today, I'm overcome with the feeling that I'm in some sort of Bizarro World where something somewhere went horribly awry. Somewhere in a universe of aesthetic justice, Swervedriver got the chance to fill arenas, while Noel and Liam Gallagher ended up working in the produce section at Marks and Spencer. But alas, I do not live in that universe.
Fortunately, I do live in a universe where Swervedriver's principal architect--singer/songwriter/guitarist Adam Franklin--is still carrying on. Since 2000, he's gracefully married his classicist's songwriting pen with gently cinematic electronics on his side project Toshack Highway, and in June, Franklin released an excellent solo effort that effectively bridges the gap between his ambient Toshack work and the old Swervedriver rattle and hum. It's called Bolts of Melody, and it resolutely refuses to leave my car stereo after three weeks of constant rotation.
Bolts of Melody confirms the erstwhile Swervedriver frontman's muse, with Swerve-worthy rockers like "Seize the Day" and "Shining Somewhere" resting cozily between some utterly beautiful acoustic ballads (his voice has matured into a surprisingly affecting croon). The album's relaxed, warmly psychedelic vibe makes for great trip music during these heady summer days, and it's looser and more heartfelt than anything Franklin's former labelmates Oasis have ever released. The Gallagher brothers may have gotten the arenas and supermodel girlfriends, it seems, but Adam Franklin got the dignity.
Comments