UK indie / shoegaze kings, Swervedriver have released their first album in over 15 years. Titled, ‘I Wasn’t Born To Lose You‘, the Australia / New Zealand release has been taken care of by Melbourne label Poison City Records on Vinyl / CD & Digital formats.
In the lead up to the release, Swervedriver released a digital single for the track ‘Setting Sun‘, it included a cover of Television’s track ‘Days‘ as the B-Side.
Swervedriver released four albums in their original run between 1989 and 1998. They went on hiatus for a decade before reuniting in 2008. They appeared on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon in 2012, and a year later, they shared their single ‘Deep Wound‘, which is included on the album.
1. Autodidact – 4:59
2. Last Rites – 3:27
3. For a Day Like Tomorrow – 5:29
4. Setting Sun – 2:55
5. Everso – 6:44
6. English Subtitles – 5:20
7. Red Queen Arms Race – 5:41
8. Deep Wound – 3:59
9. Lone Star – 4:34
10. I Wonder? – 5:40
Adam Franklin – vocals, guitar
Jimmy Hartridge – guitar
Steve George – bass
Mikey Jones – drums, percussion
Recorded at Birdland Studios in Melbourne and Konk Studios in London.
I Wasn’t Born to Lose You marks Swervedriver’s fifth album and their first new material in over 15 years. Despite the time off, I Wasn’t Born to Lose You charges out of the gates with all the power of their 1991 debut, Raise, while picking up on exploratory songwriting and daydreamy moods where 99th Dream left off. Raise was notoriously an album of hard-edged shoegaze rockers full of references to cars and driving. Band founder Adam Franklin’s long-burning love affair with automobiles touched on lots of his material solo and with Swervedriver, and it’s fitting that this album begins with “Autodidact,” a propulsive rocker peppered with lyrics about gas stations and nighttime drives.
The band’s other love — inventive and unexpected guitar tones — is present in abundance all over the album as well, from the quick-shifting dance of different layers of distortion on “Last Rites” to the patient, narcotic drifts of feedback on “Everso.” Early single “Deep Wound” blurs together burning riffs, high-pitched synth lines, and buried, distorted vocals from Franklin’s faraway rasp, sounding every bit as lonesome and twilight-colored as they did two decades earlier.
Not a complete throwback to either the dusty driving anthems of Raise or the more multicolored pop of Mezcal Head and later albums, I Wasn’t Born to Lose You sounds like a thoughtfully drawn continuation of Swervedriver’s particular breed of carefully crafted dream pop. Their drive to push forward is refreshing, and the slight updates to the band’s intricate signature sound results in an exciting comeback album and a statement that stands on its own regardless of its place in time.
www.swervedriver.com
www.facebook.com/swervedriverofficial
www.poisoncityrecords.com
