Pop Reviews : Swervedriver Revs Up the Amps at Whisky

They’d better start making amps that go up to 12 in Britain soon. The guitar-wielders from over there are wearing out the ones that go to 11, and recently there’s been a parade of ear-blistering bands coming to the Sunset Strip--Ride, Lush, My Bloody Valentine and Thursday at the Whisky, Swervedriver. Too much of a good thing? Never! Too much isn’t in the lexicon of real rock fans when it comes to loud guitars.

A bit scruffier-sounding than on its recent debut album, “Raise,” Swervedriver wasn’t as striking as My Bloody Valentine, as propulsive as Ride or as lush as Lush, but the quartet did offer a slippery twist or two of its own. The opening “Sci-Flyer” worked off a riff that sounds like Neil Young’s “----in’ Up” played by the Buzzcocks; a later song, “Rave Down,” worked off a riff that sounds like the Buzzcocks played by Crazy Horse.

That pretty much defines the band’s range, though once or twice when things slowed down a bit it sounded something like “Dark Side of the Moon” . . . played by Crazy Horse. The pacing got a bit sluggish in the set’s middle and the feedback and sustain never really coalesced into the sheet of sound of the other bands in the genre, but Swervedriver is motoring down an interesting and promising road.

Maybe we should make some 12-level amps over here, too, as more and more U.S. bands are taking part in the cyclical rediscovery of guitar glory, and not just in Seattle. Opening act, the Poster Children from Champaign, Ill., is a good one. The quartet, which has just signed to Sire Records, doesn’t offer feedback and sustain a la the headliner, just good old American collegiate-punk crunch, but with impressively odd, staggered time signatures to set it apart.