Swervedriver

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.