Swervedriver announce special 35th anniversary London appearance at The Village Underground on October 24th
- Desh Kapur
- 7 hours ago
- 2 min read
UK PSYCHEDELIC ROCK LEGENDS SWERVEDRIVER CELEBRATE 35TH ANNIVERSARY OF THEIR DEBUT CREATION RECORDS ALBUM ‘RAISE’ WITH SPECIAL LONDON DATE
‘RAISE AT 35’ LIVE AT THE VILLAGE UNDERGROUND SATURDAY 24th OCTOBER ANNOUNCED
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Originally released on Creation Records in 1991, ‘Raise’, the debut album by Oxford based indie-psych band Swervedriver had followed a series of three incendiary four-song EPs that had firmly put the band on the map of the exploding early nineties alternative rock scene. Having started out in 1984 by founding members Adam Franklin and Jimmy Hartridge as the Iggy and The Stooges inspired Shake Appeal, by the 1990 debut single ‘Son Of Mustang Ford’, they had mutated into the expansive, shimmering, guitar-clashing juggernaut that is Swervedriver. English music press tried to box the band into the ‘shoegaze’ scene popular at the time, but Swervedriver never really fitted. Theirs was a sound born out of listening from afar to the underground sounds coming out of America in the 1980s. Sonic Youth, Husker Du, Dinosaur Jr all fed into their psyche and came out the other side with a uniquely British flavour firmly intact.
First released September 30th 1991, the week after Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ album, ‘Raise’ was recorded in London at The Greenhouse and Falconer Studios and was produced by the band themselves. The album quickly found fans and favour, with Melody Maker calling it one of the “truly great albums of the year.”
Thirty-five years on, Swervedriver are ready to celebrate their iconic debut with ‘Raise At 35’ – a special performance at the Village Underground in London on October 24th, where the band will play the album in its entirety, among other songs from their vast back catalogue.
“The thing about ‘Raise’ is it has a really good flow,” explains singer and guitarist Adam Franklin. “The way the tracks are sequenced, it works perfectly as a live set. It comes in strong with ‘Sci-Flyer’, then you’ve got ‘Son Of Mustang Ford’ and ‘Deep Seat’ in there early on and It’s all over in forty minutes! There’s even a little area before ‘Sandblasted’ that has a great jam that we extend. Then the final song, ‘Lead Me Where You Dare’, we never played that live back in the day, until we decided to do the album in its entirety, and then we had to learn how to play it. It’s definitely a fun album to play from start to finish.”
The performance will commemorate the start of Swervedriver’s long career, bringing back into focus the huge influence they continue to have on contemporary dream pop, indie-psych bands. With their initial run of four albums between ’91 and ’98, and then their return in 2015 with ‘I Wasn’t Born To Lose You’ and 2019’s ‘Future Ruins’, Swervedriver proved themselves to be a band with plenty of gas left in the tank, continuing to make fresh music that easily matched their past creativity.
Watch this space for further transmissions…