Fasten your seatbelt—Swervedriver is ready to take you on a brand new ride.
“Spiked Flower” is the latest salvo from the legendary guitar band’s forthcoming album, Future Ruins, which is due to debut January 25 on Dangerbird Records.
The new album emerges just four years after 2015’s I Wasn’t Born to Lose You, a mere drop in the bucket considering that album came seventeen years after its predecessor, 1998 LP 99th Dream.
According to Swervedriver frontman Adam Franklin, the new song is heavily inspired by the spirit of post-punk guitar legend Tom Verlaine.
“When recording “Spiked Flower,” everything went very Television for a moment,” Franklin revealed in a press statement. “We were in downtown LA and Television came and played next door to the hotel we were staying at. On the Sunday, as I walked to pick up my laundry, I saw Tom Verlaine climb into a car on a side street and then Jimmy had this riff and I started singing, ‘Why don’t you talk to me?’ to it and it made me think of Marquee Moon. It didn’t sound like them in the end though.”
Indeed, “Spiked Flower” is pure Swervedriver power, brimming with thick, fuzzy guitar melodies crashing through a rolling, cascading rhythm. The band shifts gears driving full-speed into the chorus, careening recklessly into a wall of sound that’s sure to invoke Raise and Mezcal Head memories. Yeah, it’s that good. Listen to it below.
The new album was created across October 2017 through spring of 2018, crafted in studios located in Los Angeles and Brighton. The mix was finalized while Swervedriver was touring Europe, injecting the album with a genuine live and on-the-road feel. Despite the endless love and perpetual discovery that powers the band’s initial output, they’re not trying to be anyone’s nostalgia act.
“Sometimes I think we’re deceptively complicated, which is better than being the other way around!” Franklin insisted. “I love being back in this band. We’re playing places that we’ve either not played in a long time, or new places like Singapore, where there were twenty-year-old kids there and they’re singing the words to the new songs… We don’t want to be the band that just plays the old albums. We’re glad to have a whole bunch of new songs. We’re on it again.”
Swervedriver promises to follow up the release of Future Ruins with a North American tour, so hardcore fans will want to keep an eye out for those dates to come around the bend sooner than later. FL
