90’s fashion trends are back, and you know it. Just last month Saint Laurent delivered a parade of looks down a Paris runway that just as easily could’ve come from Hole’s 1998 “Celebrity Skin” video as they did Fall Fashion Week. It’s not just designer brands. Look to any Tumblr blogroll or fashion mag or even an Allston sidewalk, and see the flannels and doc martens of Gen X past. The pastel hair, the worn-in leather jackets, they’re all here. And they’re certainly here to stay.

History tends to repeat itself—in more ways than one. With the flood of flannel comes another revival of sorts. Shoegaze. In just the past few years we’ve witnessed a wake of new bands playing tribute to the 90’s Creation-era, a London record label hailed for releasing roughly a decade worth of jams from the likes of Oasis, Teenage Fanclub and loafer-looking greats, My Bloody Valentine. And then there’s Swervedriver, of course, a former Creation labelmate who’s back after 17 years to give listeners a modern take that classic hazy sound.

We sat down with Zach Weeks and Pat Talesfore, respective guitarist and drummer of Boston-based Burglary Years for a talk with Swervedriver frontman, Adam Franklin. Weeks and Talesfore entered the dialogue as true fans, pitching their questions at Franklin with the curiosity of two dedicated musicians. From our Boston office to Franklin’s West Coast spot, this conversation ranged from musical past to present—touching on early 90’s underdogs, Franklin’s upbringing playing punk music in a not-so-punk-scene, and of course, the makings of Swervedriver’s noteworthy new album, I Wasn’t Born to Lose You.

Another new album set to hit us soon is Burglary Years’ forthcoming LP, 100 Roses, a record whose tracks have been in the works for some time, and rightfully so. The album is impressive, filled with as many catchy pop hooks as shimmering swells of instrumentals to get lost in. It’s certainly not something to miss, so keep your ears peeled.

Check out the interview below before catching Swervedriver at Sinclair this Saturday, 3/28.

Zach Weeks: I’ve been a huge fan of your music since I was a teenager, and it’s really awesome to hear that you’ve put out a new record this year after putting out a new single a couple years ago. I guess one of my questions from a musical point of view isn’t, “Oh, what inspired you to write a new record?” but rather, what was the process behind writing new music together for the first time in a really long time? Was it different from before? How did that feel?

Adam Franklin: Well, I was interested in having it come as sort of an art project rather than trying to write as Swervedriver or something like that. There were different methods of writing than we used to have because we could email ideas to each other and stuff like that. And there were a few full stops, literally—a few ideas that didn’t seem to have the right steam or whatever, but then once one good tune came along, they would sort of blow quite naturally.

But really, we were all saying ideas back and forth. One tune came out, it was from an old sound check we had in 1998, and that turned into something. There were other things, like we were trying to figure out how to end one song—and Steve [George] kind of reversed the tape recording and ended up getting a separate song, so that was interesting. And yeah, eventually there was like a pool of tunes that we got together and thought might be the album. Luckily we all agreed that the ten we had were the ten… sort of goers, you know?

ZW: Yeah, definitely. Did you record the record to tape?

AF: We didn’t actually, no.

ZW: Do you have a preference between working in Pro Tools or working on analog tape?

AF: Not really, no. Tape’s too expensive. It’s fifteen minutes or whatever, or a half-inch or something and that’s two songs… and you know, you can’t do thousands of tapes. And then there’s mastering the tape and things like that.

Pat Talesfore: You said you had email correspondence as you guys were shooting songs back and forth. Was there a lot of rehearsal getting back together and making this new record? Or was it more like shooting ideas back and forth and then one big rehearsal, and the recording process afterwards?

AF: It was sort of a mixture. We weren’t always in one place, but people were coming up with ideas when we were able to get together. There was Mikey [Jones], and in between we also had rounds with Devin Townsend. He sort of played the responsibility of the studio because he was in London, so he helped out knocking various ideas around.

It was a mixture, really, because we weren’t always in the same place. Initial ideas would go back and forth, and then building up to the actual recording itself—we did half of it in Australia, because we were on tour there and we weren’t together with Mikey when was in New York, and we were all in London. And so in the middle of Australia, we just had a day in the studio in Melbourne called Birdland—which is a great studio. We knocked out five songs there, and then the other five were done in London a few months later. We had like one rehearsal, a show, and then two rehearsals, and then went in the studio for a couple days and got the rest of it.

PT: That’s nice. I like the idea of playing a show and then running through the studio with that kind of energy. That’s cool.

AF: I think that was crucial, because most times we were actually playing Raise in its entirety. I think it got us in the energy of playing live and stuff, but also what we were playing of the old album kind of gave us a sense of how the new album worked.

ZW: You mentioned that you recorded part of the album in Australia. You guys used to own a recording studio, right?

AF: Yeah, yeah.

ZW: I’m a recording engineer and I record most of the material for the bands I’m in. What’s your philosophy between recording your own records or working with someone else? From your experience using a label advance to build a studio of your own, do you have a preference?

AF: The good thing about the studio, of course, is that you have more time. But the other extreme with the studio was at the time, we were renting it out. At the end it was kind of like we were in there less than we wanted to be, anyway. But I think in some ways, it’s better to have a deadline rather than endlessly recording. That’s actually a good thing about recording to tape, that you can’t endlessly record tracks. You have to edit yourself as you go along.

In the end, especially since we were doing the shows, we were just… more well rehearsed, really. I think that’s the thing— knowing beforehand how you’re going to sound, or having an idea of what you’re doing. Also our rehearsal space in London before recording was a rickety old studio, it wasn’t anything flash. It didn’t necessarily sound great, and you couldn’t really hear the vocals and stuff, but that was also a good thing because if it sounded good in this rickety old studio, it would sound even better when all the sounds were separated and everything.

But really it’s about being well rehearsed, which you can give to bands in the 60’s. When you haven’t got endless time in the studio, you basically rehearse what you’ve got and get in and record. The weird thing about the modern age, in a way, is that you have endless amounts of tracks and endless amounts of plugins and all this kind of stuff… and the band might not be that well rehearsed or played, you know (laughs). I think the philosophy behind knowing what you do is being well rehearsed.

PT: You can’t beat that.

AF: Although with some of the songs, we didn’t know. Like the song “Everso,” we didn’t quite know exactly where it was going until a certain point. We could get the basic tracks down, and then myself and Jimmy went back in for five more days, maybe, doing guitar. And some tracks were then edited as well, like “Red Queen Arms Race” was just one long studio jam. And when it came to the actual recording, we’d keep four bars here, and this intro… we wanted to keep it high and not have any sort of excess. Any sort of stuff we didn’t need was eradicated.

PT: From what it sounds like, this was a very calculated process. You guys kind of had it down to a science before stuff was even set to record, huh?

AF: I sort of agree, but I also think it’s good to have things where you don’t know what’s going to happen. Certain sounds or certain sections where you just come up with a sound spontaneously and it works. There are sounds on… “Setting Sun,” I think it is—the vocal end goes “do-do-do-do-do-do” like a guitar sound that I just literally did on the spot. And I was like, “Oh shit, that actually sounds kind of good.”

So in the end, I think it’s a mixture of all that. To know what you do, but still leaving enough room for the happy accidents. And that’s similar to the age of digital things. The warmth you get from tape can be reintroduced and balanced as well. But as far as tape versus digital with the modern world, people think it’s crazy, but you might as well make things easy for yourself. We’d record stuff at home and think, “Oh, shit. Here’s another guitar that could be in there.” We’d record it straight into a laptop and put it in later. There’s a harmony at the end of “Autodidact” that came later on. We recorded it into my laptop and threw it in straight as well.

ZW: Definitely. And with modern recording, it’s so easy to have full flexibility over what you’re doing. The modern convenience of being able to do something like that, to record a track directly into your laptop and bring it in after the fact, and have it sound like it’s supposed to be there rather than completely out of context. We have a record coming out eventually, we recorded it in a studio but then I mixed the entire thing on my laptop (laughs). When you’re on a budget, you know?

AF: That also goes back to Rave Down and our second single. We were mixing it down and we had all these amps that we rented. The company had taken all the amps back or whatever, and then suddenly it was like the second line—the second guitar that comes in on Rave Down, we thought, “Shit, there’s got to be some way we can record this.” So we did, and we just plugged it straight in the deck. And it had this nice fuzzy sound, which worked really nice with other sounds as well. I think it’s good to mix all that. If you record a vocal in the bath or in the studio with headphones on, and you might get a different performance if you’re lying on your back or (laughs) if you’re a bit stressed out.

ZW: Yeah, that’s like half of the Fleetwood Mac records from the 70’s. They recorded a ton of the guitar direct into mixing console. And that stuff sounds great, you know? It has a very unique character. You just gotta improvise sometimes.

AF: Yeah! There’s a sound on the third album—a guitar sound that came in from one of those little tiny Marshall amps whose battery was getting flat. It had this kind of cool decayed sound, and we thought we should capture that now before the battery completely died.

ZW: That’s really unique, that’s cool.

PT: Are there any bands that are worth paying attention to? Newer bands that you’ve been paying attention to?

AF: Yeah. There’s this band called Last Ex, they’re from Montreal. It’s kind of like Italian film music or something; they put out a really good album. And there’s a band called Death and Vanilla that I really like. They’re from Stockholm, I think. Their stuff is more like broadcast or something, and they’re using a lot of analog stuff and mobile phones. I really like that. Do you know the band Unwound? They’re from Olympia, and they broke up. They’re last album is something I discovered years ago, and I’ve been addicted. Leaves Turn Inside You—that’s a really great album.

PT: Word, I need to check out all those bands. Were there any bands that you were gigging with when you came out as a group that went under the radar or disappeared from the scene?

AF: I’d say Thin White Rope. They were from Sacramento, California. They did a great EP called Red Sun EP, and had a couple versions of “Some Velvet Morning,” the Lee Hazlewood song. They were a two-guitar band, the rhythm section changed around quite a bit. They were as good as The Pixies. I remember one night in London, The Pixies were playing a big show at Brixton Academy, and Thin White Rope was playing this tiny show in Camden. We went to the Thin White Rope show and.., yeah, for some reason that band never really took off. In fact, we were playing a festival in Holland that they were playing, and it was their last show. We sort of got to know them a little bit. I know their manager quite well now. I think now those guys are farmers or fishermen or something (laughs).

They were a great band. That was also back when Smashing Orange—around 1990—there were two bands called “smashing.” Of course one of them was Smashing Pumpkins, who went to be rather successful… Smashing Orange, they were pretty good. They put a couple singles out. They used to play with a band from the North of England…The Lavender Faction. They had a single called “Ride,” and I think it came out before Ride existed, like 1989. That sounded great, it was a really great single. We had quite a few opportunities to play with them as well.

ZW: Earlier you mentioned The Pixies and Unwound, and since both of those bands kind of came up in punk or hardcore, does punk fit in your musical upbringing at all?

AF: Yeah, there’s all The Stooges stuff that they did after Raw Power that never got released. I think songs like “I Got a Right” and “I’m Sick of You” were hardcore punk before hardcore punk existed. It was different from what The Ramones were doing or The Sex Pistols, and we liked all that. We liked early Black Flag stuff, and the band that we were before Swervedriver—we were called Shake Appeal. We did one single and the A side was more like a Stooges thing called “Gimme Fever,” but the B side was “Mexico City SOS,” and that was pretty hardcore punk as well.

We weren’t really part of a punk scene in Oxford or anything like that, but the music we were playing was like that kind of stuff. Yeah, I think Northern England in 1987 was pretty into glam rock. But when you look at The Buzzcocks and The Damned and Mark Bolan—I think there’s much more of a closer relationship between glam rock and punk rock than you might initially think.

ZW: Oh definitely. Bands like The Damned and Buzzcocks often get lumped in with UK ’77 punk. And they went on to make really interesting music. You can tell they were super influenced by bands like New York Dolls, it’s all a really unique thing.

AF: I think that when punk rock bands got slightly psychedelic, that was interesting. You have The Damned, they covered “Alone Again Or” and released it as a single. The Buzzcocks… their fourth album has a different kind of tension, it kind of goes slightly psychedelic. That’s the thing about the Unwound album as well. It’s their last album as a three piece and it is hardcore like you say, but that last album has like, weird things going on. It sounds a bit like when Husker Du did Zen Arcade. I think it’s a bit more interesting. I mean, it’s good to have that punky edge but also.., I don’t know, it’s good to have those melodic bits and also those weird sounds, you know?

PT: That’s what I think. I love punk and I love harsh noises as much as the next guy, but pop sensibility’s great, and you can’t beat melody.

AF: Yeah. And also I think Swervedriver songs are never too far from melody in the end. That’s quite important.

ZW: On your older and also your most recent material, there’s good melodic work. You can really hear melodies and hooks and stuff. But it still has an underlying theme—in my ears, at least—that kind of sticks with you. It’s like a punch, more than anything. Rather than… other bands from the Creation era that were more ambient. Your songs just kind of punch harder.

AF: We definitely wanted to have that sort of grit on this album. The second song on the album, “Last Rites,” was quite a delicate, pretty tune if you pick it out. I think there’s sort of a double edge to it. Rather than it just be played sweetly or played really hard, it’s a sweet tune played in quite an aggressive manner.

PT: As Swervedriver, what was your original conception as an artist, and how has that changed with the new album and rebanding?

AF: Well, it’s definitely going to be more experimental with guitar and stuff. Around 1989 you had bands like Sonic Youth that were really unique and experimental. We had a friend who was really into John Fahey—you know, John Fahey? He was really into picking and all sorts of tuning. He did a couple of albums with all sorts of sound effects, there’s freight trains going by and all this sort of stuff… and we kind of wanted to be sort of exploratory a little bit with guitars. But as I was saying before, we focused on having a pop sensibility to it. You know, things can be discordant and they can be quite pretty at the same time. There’s a whole bunch of Swervediver songs that might be kind of jammy or experimental or whatever with improvised sections, but it’s never too far from being near that pop framework.

As far as how it’s changed, I don’t know. It’s difficult, it’s partly cerebral and you don’t think about it. In a sense it’s just been feeling it out in many ways. But if there’s going to be recording and words being sung, they might as well be heard.

Swervedriver plays Sinclair this Saturday, 3/28.. Doors at 8 p.m. Tickets $20