by Chris Parker
Every generation, a handful of great bands fall between the cracks. In the early ’90s, Swervedriver’s ship was lifted on the waves of distortion fomented by British shoegazers like My Bloody Valentine, Ride and Lush. Though they shared a love for sculpting textures with pedal-fueled guitar, their sound was more propulsive and visceral than their peers, thanks to a jagged post-punk streak sawing through the shuddering shimmer.
After almost a decade of existence, Swervedriver collapsed in 1999, a victim of label dysfunctions and commercial disappointment despite four great albums. By the time founding guitarist Adam Franklin started his subsequent project, Toshack Highway, he needed something different.
“I was really burned out on playing guitar, especially the whole pedal thing,” says Franklin, a British expat living in Jersey City, N.J. “I just got more interested in fiddling around with keyboards and stuff for a while. There is certainly that place where I got back into playing electric guitar, and now I’m way back into it again, really.”
This summer, Franklin released Bolts of Melody under his own name, premiering a new guitar-driven, band-backed sound. It’s not as loud or aggressive as Swervedriver, but it has a similar energy and hook-savvy shuffle. Several Toshack Highway tracks get full renovations, including a fantastic Velvets-meet-T. Rex-ish take on “Birdsong” and the chunky, ’60s-psych-inflected “Seize the Day.”
“I’ve always been quite a fan of reworking your ideas, as far back as the first Swervedriver album—the first track, ‘Sci-flyer,’ and the fourth track, ‘Deep Seat,’ actually both have the same guitar break,” Franklin says, vocally mimicking the guitar line. “No one seemed to notice we were recycling our own melodies.”
In the days since Swervedriver’s dissolution, Franklin’s explored a variety of new directions. Around the turn of the millennium, he became an Elliot Smith fan. He calls his talent “amazing,” and the loss “massive,” explaining that while “the structures are quite complex, it sounds really simple. That’s sort of the secret and a really cool thing.” It’s an appreciation that can be heard on the bubbling folk tune, “Song of Solomon.”
Franklin also rediscovered a love for John Fahey, and spent some time playing solo acoustic tours perfecting the famed guitarist’s rhythmic fingerpicking style, reworking several Swervedriver tunes for a series of acoustic shows several years ago before he pulled the electric out of mothballs.
“By the time I got back into playing the electric and got out the pedals again, there was this other dimension to it,” he says. “Now that’s mixed in as well—there’s a couple songs on the new album that have this fingerpicking thing.”
Mostly, however, people will notice the moody sway of tracks such as “Sundown,” whose languid blues-rock is colored around the fringes with little electronic sounds and buzzing detritus. Or the Lou Reed nod, “Canvey Island Baby,” whose languid, ringing guitar lines emanate a sultry warmth that recalls the parched, resonant textures of fellow Velvets acolytes Calla.
Perhaps it’s that British sense of humor, but Franklin’s very tickled that, though the band’s called Adam Franklin, the late album track “Morning Rain (Return)” features no contributions from him. He’s equally excited about his side project, Setting Suns, in collaboration with neighbor/Interpol drummer Sam Fogarino.
“We kind of met up and got on, so it was like, ‘Hey, perhaps we should do something together’ and we thought, ‘Why not?” Franklin says. They had no idea of a direction or sound, and Fogarino had some recorded material lying around. He handed it off to Franklin, who fooled with it (“figured out a vocal melody or bit of arrangement, a few extra sounds”) and passed it back, inaugurating a blossoming arrangement.
“Sam comes from kind of an interesting angle. It isn’t chords I would naturally go for,” Franklin says. Initially, he was concerned about separating songs for the two projects, but “Now it seems like a kind of style and overall aesthetic has evolved. I think we now know what the sound is somehow. It’s cool.”
They’ve finished a five-song EP of material already, and just sent it off for mastering with the expectation that it will be released sometime next month. It will be accompanied by a performance in New York at the end of the year. With Fogarino committed to Interpol for much of the next year, large-scale touring will have to wait, and The Album Leaf’s Jimmy Lavelle—who knows each of them separately—has offered to play keyboards in the live band.
Meanwhile, a Swervedriver reunion, if not in the offing, isn’t off the table. Like the Pixies or Mission of Burma, their great musical legacy (and infrequent American touring) has fostered a vibrant word-of-mouth community of fans who’d welcome a comeback tour. It’s been almost a decade since they toured the U.S., and Franklin admits the thought holds appeal, though he sounds a bit perplexed at the interest, eight years after their last show.
“I think it could be enjoyable. It seems like people ask us all the time, really,” he says. “Even before it became a fashion accessory to reform your band.”
