We caught up with Adam Franklin, vocalist and lead guitarist of Swervedriver, to talk about the band’s 2019 release Future Ruins, the band’s reunion, side projects, and more. The band performs tonight at The Saint located on Main Street in Asbury Park, New Jersey with Milly. Doors open at 7 p.m.
So Future Ruins came out earlier this year. What can you tell me now about how you approach putting together new music in 2019 vs. when you were just starting out?
A big thing back when was that the songs would more often come together in the studio out of the parts we had. These days, mostly the idea is fleshed out before we take it into the studio. It’s also easier to keep ideas going; you know back in the day if you gave someone a cassette, that could get lost easily, but now if we have something on an mp3 or some other kind of digital file, it’s much more likely that idea makes it into the song it was intended for.
Swervedriver has been through numerous lineup changes over the years. What would you say has been the affect, if any, on the music?
You know we’ve had all these different members, and it’s like walking a tightrope between being true to how we sounded at the start, but we also don’t want to get tied down to anything. A band should never really be tied down of course, but it’s a delicate thing to give people what they want while simultaneously breaking new ground. You know the worst thing that you always fear is for your group to not have longevity, or to not stand the test of time, and I think we have done that.
The worst thing is for a band to get back together and for it to not go well, either they try to stay true to their roots too much, or they move in an entirely new direction too soon. So it can be a little tricky, but I think we’re doing a good job of it. We played Australia and Japan and there are people saying it’s the best they’ve seen us, so that is gratifying.
Future Ruins is a thought-provoking album title. Would you say there was any central message you were trying to get across, or is it more open to the listener’s interpretation?
Well you know a big part of it is climate change! I’m glad it’s being taken seriously now, because for the longest time it just was not at all. But even beyond climate change, just the general sense of craziness and chaos in the world. That is definitely the central theme of the record, and lyrically we deal with a lot of those types of subjects in the songs.
What’s it like to come back to a band after spending a long time working on other projects? How does it affect the music?
Kind of like what I was talking about earlier, the main thing is we didn’t want to just be one of those bands who came back and just sounded awful and disappointed everyone, including ourselves. You always want to see that your music has stood the test of time, and luckily I think we can say ours has. You know, as musicians we always hate to toss around genre labels, but the term “shoegaze” has become kind of a useful way to identify us and a lot of the bands that were our influences back when we were starting out, even some of the more punk ones like Husker Du, Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, you know, all those kinds of bands.
Whatever you want to call this genre, shoegaze or what have you, it seems to be making a bit of a comeback in popularity. What do you think it is that keeps drawing people into this style of music?
I think a lot of what keeps people interested in this kind of music is the sense of almost melancholy. You know there are all these bands where people will say “Oh man it was great to be in the mosh pit when I was 21,” but that kind of thing may or may not last forever, and so I almost think this kind of melancholy, or whatever you want to call it, it may resonate a little more because people grow and change. You can’t always be in a mosh pit, but you can always understand these sort of struggles we deal with as people, and I think maybe that sense in the music is what keeps people interested and sort of lead to this resurgence of that style.
You collaborate in other projects as well, Toshack Highway, etc. Do you find that you ever gain a new perspective on music through working with so many different musicians?
Different musicians definitely bring in a new perspective, and especially with me, you know, I’ve collaborated in lots of different groups with plenty of musicians, and it’s always surprising how someone else’s ideas can change what was already there and push it in a new direction. It also kind of helps with the tightrope we talked about earlier, as lots of these guys, particularly in our rhythm section, they try to honor the parts played by the ones in the band who started it out, while still bringing their own kind of flair to it. So it helps keep us fresh while still giving people what they want.
Swervedriver performs at The Saint in Asbury Park, New Jersey tonight. Click here for tickets.
Additional Swervedriver Dates:
TUE 05 NOV – San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
WED 06 NOV – Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram
