Swervedriver is a band from Oxford England formed in 1989. Although often lumped in with the shoegaze movement of the time, they were much more raucous and rock oriented than their contemporaries. A reductive description would be “British Dinosaur Jr” or “Sonic Youth meet The Stooges”. Their hallmarks were lots of effects pedals, weird guitar tunings, and plenty of songs about driving. They released 3 albums on the Creation Records label and 1 more on Zero Hour in the 90s before breaking up: Raise, Mezcal Head, Ejector Seat Reservation, and 99th Dream. They have since reformed and released 2 more in this century. My favorite releases are the 4 EPs which they released before and just after their debut. Every song is killer.

The song I want to highlight is from their first EP. It’s called “Kill the Superheroes”. It’s in an alternate tuning and has a meltdown section at the end which still blows me away. The lyrics are about the Hernandez Bros. long running comic “Love & Rockets”. They cover the characters and a couple of scenes from both storylines if you’re familiar with L&R.

Punk barrio town

Your heart broken pogo up & down

DC O.D. I wanna cyber-punk hero