Odd to relate that after recording this typically excellent album, Swervedriver were dropped by their label, DGC, eventually releasing it a year later through New York indie Zero Hour. That decision by Geffen & Co. is at odds with the surging, electric, blissful spirit of 99th Dream, which emits clouds of psychedelia at every turn.
The title track bends and swoons with the sort of incandescence abandoned by My Bloody Valentine earlier in the decade; Up From The Sea is elemental, woozy. Tracks like Electric 77 and Stellar Caprice feel almost self-descriptive, states of epic rock grace, bubbling and oozing with beauty.
Additional tracks include Why Say Yeah, further evidence that Swervedriver had hardly run out of steam.
Like AC Acoustics, Swervedriver feel like a group who – in a more just universe – would have been as commercially big as the sound they made. It’s sad to think how prevalent and mainstream trad Brit rock was in 1998, and how diminished it was in comparison with the likes of 99th Dream.
