English alternative rock band Swervedriver’s ‘The World’s Fair’ EP is a hazy, haunting, and beautifully layered return, balancing euphoria and unease in a swirling, dreamlike soundscape.
Stream: ‘The World’s Fair’ – Swervedriver
On their dreamy 1998 post-britpop tune “These Times,” Adam Franklin summed up Swervedriver’s sound as “The Stooges high, and a Bunnymen style,” which, while being achingly succinct, also parsed their genre palate perfectly.
There’s much more of the latter on The World’s Fair, Swervedriver’s first release since 2019’s Future Ruins. It takes many cues from that fruitful scene in ’80s northern England. The heavier tones of pieces like “Son of Mustang Ford” and “For Seeking Heat” take a backseat for the band’s gentle side, the self-proclaimed practitioners of space travel rock and roll choosing to offer a set of dense hazy tunes for their latest project.
Swervedriver have a knack for making music that sounds both euphoric and unsettled. It’s like climbing to a high altitude on a warm sunny day, only to look out over the huge landscape in front of you, and see a storm cloud approaching quicker than you can get down to cover. Sure it feels nice now, but something’s coming to wreck your day. It’s a piquant ambivalence which, when they get it right, is stunning music to behold. “Volume Control,” the stand-out piece on the EP, delivers just that.
It’s one of the group’s more varied songs, beginning immediately with the entire band in full flight. It’s fairly orthodox in the first half – The band are in their comfort zone, with multiple guitar pedals lit up and cymbals crashing each second. Everything drops for the piano breakdown, and that’s where things get really whipped up. As the strings swirl and pick up the song for its finale, we’re treated to a brooding maelstrom of noise. With Franklin singing about being “terrorised” in his calm whisper, this further escalates the duality of emotion into something hauntingly beautiful. This song is notable for its economic but effective use of a string section, the most prominent since “Last Day on Earth” way back in ‘95.
One thing I appreciated right from the first play was the switch-up to the choruses on “Pack Yr Vision.” I’m a sucker for a tempo shift or time signature change, (though forgive my music theory illiteracy if neither of those things happen in the song) things which were a staple of ’90s-era rock experimentation when the Swervies were coming up. It snaps you out of a daze, like the movie has begun and you should put your phone in your pocket and start paying attention.
As the drums tighten up and the song really starts to soar, Franklin urges us to “take a hold of the next one, and make it right” – referencing the many chances we have in life for happiness which inevitably slip by. It’s a sentiment which tracks with the sweetly triumphant music, and for a short while, everything’s OK.
All too soon, the saddened vibe returns in the verses, dropping “Pack Yr Vision” back down to Earth, and neatly illustrating a core element of the band’s output – Swervedriver are expert dealers in dreamscapes. Their songs work as transitional phases of consciousness. They sound like something your brain would come up with while you idle in traffic, or as you watch the world go by from a cafe table.
Their music is deftly weighted with delicate nuance, something which can be easy to miss. What may seem like a muddy cacophony at first will reveal itself eventually as a blooming meadow of sounds. Swervedriver are a band whose music benefits from commitment.
Swervedriver have always been melodic, but they have also always been very loud.
Apart from blasting eardrums at concerts, this adds an element to the sound – Jimmy Hatridge’s minimal one string riffing, slow arpeggios, and single-struck chords tower over the songs. His guitarwork is usually a couple of bends here, a natural harmonic there, but with the amp turned right up it becomes monolithic. That’s all over this EP, and is a defining aspect of Swervedriver’s sonic aesthetic.
Long-time appreciators of the Swervies will immediately notice the prominent piano on the title track, “The World’s Fair.” The band have been strictly guitar-based from the beginning, so to have something else in there really stands out. As the keys slam the hammers down, and the chords ring out across the mix, the piano becomes the steadiest melody line in the song, contrasting the chaotic nature of the arrangement. It’s a tough job to adequately produce music like this; to balance the competing priorities of each instrument and come out with something more than just noise – but the band have got it down to an art.
The EP ends with the simplest and most orthodox track. “Time Attacks” harks right back to the early days of the group, offering a happier, transcendent mood to finish. This is the most shoegaze-influenced of all the tracks, a label I’m not overly keen to give to Swervedriver, as I always thought their sound reflected more of the garage rock scene and other alternative styles from the USA, rather than their homegrown contemporaries such as My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive. In any case, “Time Attacks” is a bright and hopeful closing note to what can be a foreboding, even ominous set of songs.
On The World’s Fair, Swervedriver bring their familiar early ’90s style, a credo which they have stayed faithful to throughout their career. But they still have so much to offer within the scope of their sound. That makes these fuzzy, pleasant, and downright psychedelic songs come across as fresh as they would have done 30 years ago.
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