SWERVEDRIVER
The Middle East Downstairs, Cambridge, Mass., February 26, 1998

It's been a long time since they rock and rolled -- and not because their drummer happened to choke to death on his own vomit. Instead, the bad luck that has dogged Oxford, England's Swervedriver for most of this decade has, in some ways, seemed even more frustrating: a protracted bout with lost time during which the band was signed to, then dropped by, three record labels. Now, recently inked to a deal with New York-based indie Zero Hour, Swervedriver are finally back, touring behind the brand new 99th Dream, an album that marks the band's Stateside return after nearly five years off.

Remarkably, Swervedriver's sold-out show here opening for Hum felt more like a homecoming than the start of a make-it-or-break-it jaunt into foreign, previously hostile -- or, at least indifferent -- territory. Part of that sense had to do with an audience that, from the outset of the band's hour-long set, clearly relished every glistening, distortion-drenched riff from Adam Franklin and Jimmy Hartridge's jet-engine guitars. And part of it had to do with the undiminished vitality of the band itself. Swervedriver apparently felt so certain of their power to reach an audience that hadn't heard them since, oh, 1994, that they opened with the hijacked Dylanisms of "It's All Happening Now," an obscure import-only single from '95's Ejector Seat Reservation -- an album not even released in this country. Now *that's* confidence.

As singer-guitarist Franklin wrapped his arid sneer around the melody (lifted wholesale from Mr. Zimmerman's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"), the band launched into a lushly panoramic sonic universe that defined similarly epic-sounding songs like "Blowin' Cool" and the gorgeous meditation of "Last Day On Earth."

The knock against Swervedriver has been that there's not much to look at. Well, that's true. No one flailed away at their guitar at Rock God crotch level, or threw themselves in an angst-addled heap against a stack of Marshalls. Drummer Jez did not spontaneously combust. But it was difficult to care about such spectacle when there was so much to *hear*. And what one heard Thursday was the careening roar of a band surveying the thrilling peaks and depth-charging the valleys of not only its material, but its career as well -- from the dense, inexorable pull of the band's first semi-hit, "Rave Down," to the spirited, breezy resolve of "These Times." With its buoyant melody and Franklin's triumphant embrace of the lyric "We live through these times/And we're never gonna cha-ange," it was hard not to hear the song as autobiography.

JONATHAN PERRY