Swervedriver - Sandblasted
This wasn’t quite the first thing I heard by Swervedriver—I’d caught “Son Of Mustang Ford” and “Pile-Up” on the local college radio station—but the “Sandblasted” video did a great job of contextualizing Swervedriver for me. It clearly presented all of the themes that would dominate their aesthetic: muscle cars, long hair, beaches, driving, noisy guitars, and a vague sense of loneliness and melancholy that they were never able to escape, no matter how fast they drove. They may hide their sadness behind the rock trappings of leather jackets and sunglasses, but it always comes through in the music.
The “Sandblasted” video began a very personal relationship between me and Swervedriver’s music, a sense of ownership and connection I never felt with any of the other shoegaze bands (well, except for the Boo Radleys, if they count). Their music seemed both for and about people just like me—the kids who knew what was cool but couldn’t ever seem to become part of it. The kids who used noise to drown out their pain. The kids who couldn’t wait to get behind the wheel and get on the road, even if they didn’t know where they were going. Just as long as the opportunity was presented to get away, that was good enough. This video seems, in that loose, obscure way of all music video narratives, to tell the story of a group trip to the beach. We don’t know what Adam Franklin and his bandmates are looking for, but by the end of the video, we’re sure they haven’t found it. They console themselves by getting back in the car, putting the (gas/distortion) pedal to the floor, and hitting the road.
