Kids, come gather round I’m going to tell you the complete history of early 90’s hair-wagging, peddle-hopping shoegazers like My Bloody Valentine, Ride, The Swirlies, The Lilys, Curve, A.R. Kane, Lush, Catherine Wheel, Pale Saints, Velocity Girl and Swervedriver. NOT! What am I the goddamned Shell Answer Man? Google it, you little shits. Repeat after me: I am not your mother, your mother is at home smoking a doobie as big as a baby’s arm and trancing out to Mezcal Head. Anyway, here’s pretty much everything you need to know about Swervedriver who play Late Night With Jimmy Fallon tonight and Union Transfer tomorrow night:
After that, Swervedriver embarks on a U.S. tour, starting Wednesday in Philly and winding down April 7 in Los Angeles. It’s a slim but rewarding launch window for both noobs and old-schoolers crate-digging for last century’s stunners sadly underestimated by those in search of less challenging artistry. That doesn’t include Madonna, who according to Swervedriver’s Adam Franklin, had discerning tastes in so-called shoegaze. “Many years ago, a sound engineer friend of ours told us that sometime in the mid ’90s, he found himself at a dinner table with Madonna,” Franklin (below, bearded) told me. “He swore that after she asked him which bands he had worked with, and he mentioned Swervedriver, she said, ‘Ah yes, best guitars in the business!’ I really should ask him again about that. Perhaps he was on drugs at the time, or perhaps we were when he told us.” With a sonic heat signature that converged somewhere between the raw power of The Stooges and the cerebral trips of Sonic Youth, Swerdriver’s four full-lengths and underestimated rarities have grown in relevance with the flight of time’s arrow. When its pyrotechnical debut head-trip Raise first arrived in 1991, it fought desperately for breathing room alongside Metallica’s self-titled crossover, Nirvana’s angst-ridden Nevermind, as well as My Bloody Valentine’s masterwork Loveless. But as the curtain closed on its 20th anniversary last year, it had climbed to the upper hindsight of pop-cult tastemakers old and new. MORE
We have a pair of tickets to see Swervedriver at UT tomorrow night to give away to the first Phawker reader to email us at FEED@PHAWKER.COM with the words ‘Swervedrive Me!’ in the subject line. Good luck and godspeed!