IMAGE: Johnny Moto |
[PSYCH POP] Adam Franklin has always had his own sound. It was present even in the early days, when his band Swervedriver released its debut full-length, Raise, in 1991. The London group’s hallmark distortion pedals and warbling guitar licks and frontman Franklin’s queasy vocals combined to form a wall of sound that, while lumped into the shoegaze genre, was theirs alone.
Fast-forward almost 20 years to his latest solo disc, Spent Bullets, and Franklin’s still working on that dizzying wall: The new effort may not be quite as loud as Swervedriver was, but Franklin layers his vocals, writes richly visual lyrics, plays seasick guitar lines and shoots it all through a labyrinth of pedals. Well, maybe not as many pedals as we thought. “People always say, ‘You must have so many pedals,’” Franklin says via telephone from the East Coast. “I don’t really. It’s just stompboxes. I don’t use a lot of Line 6 effects and things.”
Franklin continues to expound on pedals he does and doesn’t use, and it becomes apparent he could talk about pedals all day. That geekery is a key to his career: Aside from working with great producers—including frequent Robyn Hitchcock producer Charlie Francis, who co-produced Spent Bullets—Franklin has always been directly involved in the recording process.
That dedication to sonic craft is a two-edged sword, as Franklin’s songwriting—just as unique as his knack for knob twisting—is often discussed as a distant second to his records’ production. But Franklin tunes are packed with unusual, Morricone-esque chord progressions and highly visual lyrics that, taken on their own, read like beat poetry. Franklin epics like Swervedriver’s “Last Train to Satansville” (“You look like you’ve been losing sleep said a stranger on the train/ I fixed him with an ice-cold stare and said, ‘I’ve been having those dreams again’”) and his own “Ramonesland” (“And even when you’ve got her you don’t feel you’re gonna get her/ That she’s gonna float off sideways disappear into the ether) twist and turn to understated conclusions. Spent Bullets contains some of Franklin’s best songs to date, though lyrically they’re more brief and understated than free-roaming. “Winter Girls” is a creepy waltz full of classical-guitar flourishes and psychedelic vocal laments. The gorgeous “End Credits” is every bit as cinematic as its name would suggest, revisiting a longtime Franklin theme of the natural world reflecting the inner one.
While Franklin admits he’s thought about his lyrics more since going solo—the wordier, more thoughtful Swervedriver songs were the ones he’d still perform after Swervedriver first broke up in 1998 (before reforming in 2008)—he seems more at home talking about pedals than words. “It’s more of a subconscious thing. It kind of evolves, really,” he says, fishing for the right words to describe his writing process. But Franklin doesn’t mind that lyrics aren’t usually the first thing people notice about his music. They’re not always what he listens for, either. “There are T-Rex songs I’ve known since I was 5,” he says. “And then I’ll suddenly realize that, all that time, I didn’t know the words.”
SEE IT: Adam Franklin plays Thursday, Jan. 21, at Rotture, with Black Nite Crash, Incredible Yacht Control and Ezra Carey. 9 pm. $8. 21+.
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