How do you best the anti-guitar-god bluster of arguably the most sonically bold and melodically sophisticated band of England’s shoegaze era? If you’re Swervedriver’s unflappable former leader, Adam Franklin, you don’t even try. You simply work off the various templates for greatness set forth by your former outfit, which, quite frankly, spewed out enough novel ideas to sustain a half-dozen indie-rock careers. Which brings us to Franklin’s latest, I Could Sleep For A Thousand Years (Second Motion), whose initial tracks were hammered out in New York late last year with his newly minted backup outfit, Bolts Of Melody. Sleep is Franklin’s most well-rounded collection to date, balancing the more laid-back guitar balladry and pop sensibilities of his last two solo albums with the ornery, volatile spark of vintage Swervedriver largely missing on those efforts. Franklin will be guest-editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him as well as our 2009 Lost Classics post on Swervedriver’s Mezcal Head.
Franklin: Dean & Britta‘s 13 Most Beautiful … Songs For Andy Warhol Screen Tests is a musical score of 13 Velvets-esque, rock ‘n’ roll vignettes set to film footage of Andy Warhol’s “screen tests”: four-to-six minute still-camera, moving-image portraits of Factory regulars and luminaries such as Billy Name, Nico, Edie Sedgwick, et al, as well as guests who may have been passing through, such as Dennis Hopper. Every picture tells a story, but a toothbrush steals the show. The DVD has been available for a while now, and a double CD featuring eight remixes is to become available July 27 on Double Feature Records. Dean & Britta and their band (featuring the multi-talented Matt Sumrow, who also played bass on my new album) have been playing live performances of this show around the globe (that I keep missing), and Dean has also authored a biography called Black Postcards that is well worth the read.
