Future Ruins

The second LP of their decade-long comeback is defined by the warm fuzz of Adam Franklin and Jimmy Hartridge's guitars--like a dusty desert sirocco, creating a benign concussed daze. [Mar 2019, p.118]

The band flips the traditional lexical of their genre, emphasizing the spaces between the anthemic, quasi-pavlovian verse-chorus-verse structure that defines classic rock n’ roll. The band’s sixth album, Future Ruins, similarly thrives in the spaces between the power chords and choruses.

Where I Wasn't Born to Lose You was electric with the excitement of Swervedriver's rebirth, Future Ruins is the sound of a band that's happy to be back and ready to get down to the business of pushing their sound forward.

Bold and ambitious, Future Ruins is deliriously difficult to place, and all the more exciting for it.

The most important aspect of Future Ruins and Swervedriver is it shows that the band still have something to say and prove. They’re in it for the long haul and, hopefully, back for good to document all our future ruins.

Future Ruins achieves everything an admirer could ask of the reunited band's new album. [Feb 2019, p.84]

None of this is so very different from Swervedriver’s catalog, or indeed from the guitar-crashing dream pop of Adam Franklin’s Bolts of Melody, but it is very fine anyway.

Whether or not Future Ruins is the record that finally breaks Swervedriver through to the masses, it shows the band are still making their own breakthroughs.

Not only is Future Ruins a welcome addition to the Swervedriver canon. It also fully confirms their reunion was anything but a nostalgia trip.

All in all, Swervedriver delivers the goods but with this record, it's safe to say it could have come years ago. I'd love to hear them take a risk and mix it up moving forward.

The spacious, Neil Young-ian rumbling of the title track and the bulked-up power-pop of "Spiked Flower" both see co-founders Adam Franklin and Jimmy Hartridge venture beyond the template of Raise and Mezcal Head without making the faithful worry they've ditched their distortion pedals. [Feb 2019, p.34]

Nine of the album’s ten tracks work perfectly well on their own (the dreary ‘Golden Remedy’ is instantly forgettable and turgid), yet as a collection there is something missing. Many of the songs are mid-paced, lacking the verve and energy which Swervedriver are more than capable of conjuring up. It’s a tough album to get through in one sitting due to the crushing melancholy, but there is still much here to be applauded.