Swervedriver - I Wasn't Born To Lose You

Make what you will of the likes of Indie Cindy by the Pixies or My Bloody Valentine’s m b v, playing 20 year old music is a novelty that surely wears off for both band and audience. Let’s face it, if Kevin Shields can get organised enough to record new material, absolutely no-one else has an excuse to not follow suit.

Originating from Oxford in the mid '80s, Swervedriver proved to be a square peg within the round hole of the indie music landscape of the early '90s. Perennially referred to as 'shoegaze', although there were certain 'gaze stylings (such as the epic “Lead Me Where You Dare” on their classic 1991 debut Raise, which epitomised the hazy reverbed sound), they also had guitar solos, a singer - Adam Franklin - with a slight American drawl, and songs about driving instead of looking at the sky or whatever. They sat on the outside of the genre alongside the equally rockist Catherine Wheel, and it makes sense that both bands achieved more success in the States, as with the outbreak of the Britpop epidemic in the UK neither band stood a chance at home.

After a glimpse of future sounds during their Raise tour last year, it would be logical for the new material to be influenced by that album. Instead, I Wasn’t Born To Lose You, their first for seventeen years (ten of which saw the band lay dormant), snuggles up closest to the just as loved 1993 album Mezcal Head. Unfortunately there are no 11 minute jazzy sax excursions done so well on standalone release of the era, “Never Lose That Feeling”, nor anything as druggy as the masterful four minute build-up of "Duress", but they've certainly managed to record a set which adds to their legacy.

There are no real sonic deviations from what we expect to hear on a Swervedriver record. And what would be the point? Opening tracks “Autodidact” and “Last Rites” are instantly familiar, with the interplay of Franklin and Jimmy Hartidges’ guitar, the woozy reverb on the latter and the sun-dazed psychedelic instrumental passage on the former. Despite this very much sounding like what you’d expect a Swervedriver album to sound like, there are subtle tweaks; “Red Queen Arms Race” is a piece of desert sludge with heavy, cokey '70s riffage, while the insistent guitar chime of “Setting Sun” is reminiscent of the guitar work of George Harrison in ’69. “Everso”, containing the lyric which named the album, is a highpoint and centerpiece which acts as a three part suite; the drama of a patient bass heavy build up, and the grunge tinged crescendo of noise in middle section which gives way to a warm, lilting shot of pastoral psych.

Reformation acts need to make new music to achieve some kind of validation. Graham Coxon put this perfectly when he stated that “We couldn't have done any more shows without some new material, it was getting tedious, some of the fans were getting peeved about it” at the recent launch for Blur’s forthcoming long player. Of course Swervedriver now, as was the case then, operate on a much smaller scale. But unlike many acts who just disappear when they fizzle out, Franklin has remained musically active. Since the band’s split in 1998, he’s recorded soloas Toshack Highway, and as part of Bolts Of Melody and also Magnetic Morning (alongside Interpol’s Sam Foragino). The majority of this output has naturally sounded somewhat Swervedriver-y, and I Wasn’t Born To Lose You is a natural progression of that. Swervedriver’s knack for making Americana-tinged rock from the outside looking in remains totally undiminished.