Music | When I Disappear

LIVE: Propulsive Swervedriver are out on their own

Swervedriver // Islington Academy // 16/5/19

Swervedriver are a band that fell between the cracks. Too heavy to hang with the shoegazers whose doorstep they were dumped on in the early 90s, they were also a little too hazily melodic to be fully adopted by grunge – despite early support slots with Soundgarden and Smashing Pumpkins. A quartet of guitar-slinging lone rangers, the Oxford band have always seemed out on their own, with a sound of their own.

And it’s an impressively intense sound, even in the atmosphere-free surroundings of a drab and less than full Islington Academy. The band – founder members Adam Franklin and Jimmy Hartridge, along with former Supergrass bassist Mick Quinn and drummer Mikey Jones – kick start the night with Mary Winter, a stand out from their recent Future Ruins album. It’s also an instructive introduction to their extra abrasive, more-in focus spin on the Valentines’ amorphic noise.

Like MBV, Swervedriver play loud. Stand at the back of the room if you want, you’ll still end up feeling like you’ve been lashed to a speaker and forced to withstand the distortion rather than listen to it. That muscular aggression continues through MM Abduction’s sledgehammer chords and the Morricone-gone-metal of Last Train To Satansville, Franklin’s drawled vocals drowning under an endlessly looping howl of feedback.

Of course, this being Swervedriver there’s sugar sprinkled on the sandpaper. Duel and Autodidact are fuelled by propulsive melodies, while an epic Deep Seat explodes dramatically, spraying shards of pretty noise across the drab room. Perhaps the highlight, however, is an early outing in the set for 1992 single Never Lose That Feeling, which has never lost its free-wheeling, fuzzy magic.

Throughout, everything is about that sound they’re making. Forget strobing light or stage pyrotechnics, this is music to soundtrack the epic road trips you take in your head.

They sign off with the detached cool of Rave Down from their debut Raise, and saunter away into the night unfussed, as if the last couple of hours never happened.

Thirty years on, while contemporaries like Ride and Slowdive are finally getting their dues, Swervedriver are still out on their own – but you get the feeling they wouldn’t want it any other way.

Autumnal, immersive, elemental: The Cure’s Disintegration turns 30

The Cure’s remarkable eighth album Disintegration turns 30 this month – and I wrote about it here for the NME. Go have a look!

Oh, and if you’ve never listened to the album before, go have a listen – it’s a beautiful, bleak and broken-hearted wander through Robert Smith’s anguished state-of-mind as he contemplated his own 30th birthday.

Smudged lipstick optional but recommended…

LIVE: Razor-sharp Ride travel back to the future

Ride // The Moth Club, Hackney // 23/04/19

“When we first started, we used to play Chelsea Girl twice,” says Ride frontman Mark Gardener, namechecking the band’s infectious, buzzing 1990 debut single, before treating the Moth Club crowd to a second, razor-sharp run-through of their latest release Future Love.

It’s an appropriate call-back: the bittersweet jangle of the shoegaze pioneer’s new track channels their most tuneful moments, and suggests 2017’s impressive comeback collection Weather Diaries marked a true creative rebirth. Like their early 90s Thames Valley pals Slowdive, Ride appear determined not to tarnish the reputation their genre-defining early work garnered during the 20 years they were apart, and Future Love fits seamlessly into a setlist that takes in their finest moments.

This being a tiny but packed fan club gig, the band are playing to a partisan crowd. Still, it’s difficult not to be genuinely impressed by the raw, metallic edge of songs like Seagull, Charm Assault and Drive Blind, all of which cut even deeper live than on record. Ride never deserved the accusation of being fey home counties fops that was flung at them by the music press during their first flush of success, and in the cramped, glitter-ceilinged setting of the Moth Club the brutality that lies beneath the beauty of their sound is impossible to ignore. It’s ear-crushingly loud.

That’s not to say they don’t let the beauty take centre stage at times. The Oxford four-piece have always done the whole dreamy guitar thing better than most and the more delicate moments of the set, such as the languid Catch You Dreaming and indie classic Vapour Trail, are undeniably mesmerising.

Casting the same spell at the huge festivals they’re heading to this summer will be a tougher task, but on this evidence Ride are certainly worth their second spin.