Pitchfork

It's sadly appropriate that the title for this two-disc retrospective comes from a B-side. The sadness comes from a case of the woulda-coulda-shouldas, wherein this group, in that "other world" music writers and fans like to talk about, would be the top of the pops from Timbuktu to Kalamazoo. Instead, Swervedriver was beset by the sorts of calamities and mishaps that turn a would-be world-beater into an asterisk. For instance, the drummer leaving for a sandwich during a North American tour stop the way dead-beat dads go out for cigarettes. Also, the group getting dropped from a label one week after said label releases the newest record. In addition, the group getting signed to a multi-national major label right before the corporation decides to do a little downsizing, which includes the band. And, of course, the most damning strike of all: making idiosyncratic music that folks try to describe and market with one-word descriptors. I'd prefer to defer to the term main songwriter and guitarist Adam Franklin coined when talking about Swervedriver-- "space travel rock'n'roll".

The group's first album, Raise, shared enough sonic and textural similarities with their Creation Records contemporaries that the "shoegazer" label Swervedriver received wasn't woefully inappropriate. While most bands of that ilk were looking down at their feet due to shyness and/or boredom, Swervedriver looked down to make sure they were hitting the right guitar pedal before letting fly with a guitar solo. No doubt Adam Franklin and Jimmy Hartridge learned how to stare at their Chuck Taylors by watching J Mascis. Juggernaut Rides starts and ends with versions of the group's first single, "Son of Mustang Ford"-- Disc 1 features the official single, while Disc 2 concludes with a previously unreleased demo of the track. It's a decent enough song, but the horse I'll put my money on is "Rave Down", a track that makes the seemingly awful notion of "shimmering grunge" sound brilliant.

And then the drummer got hungry, and the bassist left in a more traditional fashion, so Franklin and Hartridge found themselves a new drummer (Keith Moon wannabe Jez) and, as a trio, recorded Mezcal Head, the pinnacle of the group's short career. If you don't believe me, believe the track listing-- out of the 33 tracks included on these two discs, 11 were either on the record, released as B-sides to its singles, or featured on its promos. This includes six actual album tracks, if you count "Never Lose That Feeling", a UK single added as a bonus for the U.S. version of the album, and "93 Million Miles From The Sun And Counting", a slower (and lesser) rerecording of an album track, "Maggie & Harry".

Mezcal Head found the group synthesizing their touchstones and discovering a sound that was both panoramic and spartan, as well as fine-tuning a lyrical voice already enamored with pulp fiction trappings like fast cars and fast death and (thanks to Quentin Tarantino) surf guitar. Unfortunately, the folks compiling this set went with the single-length versions of most of these tracks, and not the superior expansive album-length versions-- hence, instead of the 11-minute workout from the U.S. pressing of the album, there's the abrupt fade-out at the end of "Never Lose That Feeling" after a measley four minutes. The highlight of this bunch is "Last Train to Satansville", a story about a guy, a girl, a gun, and a passenger on a train underpinned by a terse locomotive rhythm. Franklin's laconic smoky croon is the perfect vehicle for this tale, an imaginary collaboration between Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese.

Ejector Seat Reservation, the group's 3rd album, came to be during the rise of Oasis and Cool Britannia. Where the pop sensibilities of the Brothers Gallagher involved little more than sincerely flattering the Beatles, Swervedriver went full-on pop, quoting everything from Bob Dylan to Burt Bacharach (on "How Does It Feel To Look Like Candy"), offering choruses of "ba ba ba" and "la la la", and tossing out hooks like eight-armed fishermen (good luck getting "The Other Jesus" out of your head). It's a loopy, silly, fantastic record, the sort of album that critics love (hi there), cash registers shun, and record labels avoid-- Ejector Seat Reservation was never released in the U.S., though used bin divers can probably find A&M promos for this disc in the usual places. Their final album, 99th Dream, served as a fitting summation of where the group had been-- the title track brings the hooks and the "Misirlou" homage, while "Behind The Scenes of the Sounds and the Times" brings the widescreen vistas and the long song titles. And that's where it ends.

So now, seven years later, there's this compilation, with rarities and unreleased tracks rubbing elbows with songs that were featured in NME as both Single of the Week and Single of Next Week. For newcomers, navigating Juggernaut Rides might seem daunting, but it's conveniently organized so that most of the choice cuts are included on Disc One. Not to say that Disc Two isn't worth a listen-- "Duress" and the unreleased "Neon Lights Glow" (with a respectful nod to Link Wray) is definitely worth checking out-- but it's somewhat superfluous in light of what the first disc has to offer. For fans, this collection is a loving and generous mash note, even if they probably already own most of the tracks on here. For the group being honored here, Juggernaut Rides is a fitting tribute, putting a fantastic set of neglected songs back into print. This is Swervedriver's beautiful corpse. It's a wonder to behold.