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: Altai Rockets is the brainchild of Nick Bergin. When Nick was 16, he used to hitchhike around the north of England to come see Swervedriver shows, and many years later we formed the guitar section of Robin Proper-Sheppard’s Sophia collective for a European tour. Nick has also served time in the U.K. incarnation of Bolts Of Melody and now both lives and drinks wine in Camden Town, London.
“Gravity” (download):
https://magnetmagazine.com/audio/Gravity.mp3
