When Swervedriver effectively disbanded in 1998, the group’s quiet breakup seemed like the inevitable conclusion to a nine-year career of false starts and near-misses. Though the British alt-rockers had released four critically acclaimed records — including their pinnacle, 1995’s Ejector Seat Reservation — their chances at wider commercial success had been stymied by a series of unfortunate, nigh unavoidable circumstances. Band members abruptly departed mid-tour; label disputes resulted in a scattered, barely promoted release for Ejector Seat; and the group’s exhaustion with the drug scene surrounding their studio eventually led to them moving out. The end of Swervedriver, then, seemed like the logical final chapter to the band’s unlucky story.
The band went their separate ways. Lead singer Adam Franklin formed the group Toshack Highway and began curating a solo career, while then-drummer Jez Hindmarsh self-published a memoir about touring with the band. When the band announced that they would reunite in 2008 — after a decade of relative silence — it took many by surprise.
“In truth, perhaps it was because Coachella made us an offer,” laughs Franklin, speaking over the phone ahead of the reconstituted Swervedriver’s Sept. 17 show at Saturn. Though there had been “rumblings” within the band about reuniting for years prior, Franklin says that it was the music festival that finally cemented those plans. “It’s such a cliché now, that every single band that gets back together plays at Coachella as the first thing. [But] there seemed to be a renewed interest. The time just seemed right.”
The group spent the following few years in reunion-tour mode, performing their debut album, Raise, in full. It wasn’t until earlier this year, with March’s I Wasn’t Born to Lose You, that the band released their long-awaited fifth studio album. Part of that, Franklin says, was due to his own solo output — which continued through the early years of the reunion. “I was satisfying that studio urge, so to speak,” he says. “I think it was Jimmy [Hartridge, guitarist] and Steve [George, bassist] who were most keen to do some new material. They were saying, ‘Let’s have some new material to play rather than all this old stuff.’”
“I just wanted to make another great record, personally,” Franklin adds. “It was nice to know that people still really wanted to hear the band. And when we did get back together and played again, there were people who weren’t there the first time around. That validated it, that people were checking us out for the first time as well as coming back.”
The group started working on the new album in 2012, though Franklin characterizes the early conception of the album as being filled with “false starts.” “A few ideas [were] being sent back and forth where we were like, ‘Eh, is this really the right sort of thing? Does it sound like Swervedriver?’ We didn’t want to do a big left-field album that didn’t sound like Swervedriver. That would have been a bit self-defeating.”
Technological conveniences that hadn’t been present during the recording of 1998’s 99th Dream meant that the band could share ideas and experiment with confidence. “Some interesting things came out of it,” Franklin says. Track “Everso,” for example, was the result of reversing the end of “Lone Star,” another cut from the album. “It’s a very different way of working [than we were used to],” he adds.
I Wasn’t Born to Lose You managed to bridge the gap between his desire for the band to expand their sound while making an artistic step forward. “We’re all very happy with the way the album’s turned out,” Franklin adds. “It covers all the different angles of Swervedriver, I think, and also goes off in a slightly different direction in places here and there.”
Upon its release, the album was critically lauded — marking, as many noted, another success story in the recent renaissance of British shoegaze bands. Many of Swervedriver’s contemporaries and friends in that alt-rock subgenre — including Creation Records label-mates My Bloody Valentine, Ride and Slowdive — have staged successful comebacks after years, if not decades, of being defunct.
Though Franklin expresses happiness for the renewed popularity of My Bloody Valentine and Ride — Ride frontman Mark Gardner, in fact, contributed vocals to I Wasn’t Born to Lose You — he seems most excited for the recently announced reunion of Slowdive. “I’m really [happy] for them, because I think when they finally finished back whenever it was, their crowds were kind of depleted. Their name has certainly grown over the years, and now they’re headlining all these festivals around the world.”
Audiences have changed, Franklin speculates, making shoegaze a more viable genre. “I think you can hear elements of that sort of music everywhere now,” Franklin agrees. “It’s in like, TV adverts or whatever. You know, perhaps the time has come back around again for all these bands.”
With the wind behind Swervedriver once again, Franklin sees a viable future for his band. “There are ideas floating around right now” for a follow-up record, Franklin says, with even more room for creative boundary-pushing. “It’s interesting because it’s an open book now. I think getting over this hurdle of comeback album and not letting people down with it — now that’s been achieved, it’s like, ‘Well, could [push our sound] in some direction, perhaps, and we probably should.’ What that direction should be isn’t clear right now, but I think it could be interesting.”
He adds that the most exciting point of an album “is the point before it’s even being written or recorded, when it’s all in your mind and you don’t know where it’s going to end up. Eventually, it comes alive. At the moment, it’s all sort of open-ended. I think something will happen.”
Swervedriver will perform at Saturn on Thursday, Sept. 17. Tickets are $15 in advance and $17 the day of the show. Dearly Beloved will open. Doors will open at 7 p.m.; the show begins at 8 p.m. For more information, visit saturnbirmingham.com.