Swervedriver - Duel

I always think of this song in the same breath as Leave Them All Behind by Ride.  In my mind, the two songs are almost inseparable.

Like LTAB, Duel is one of the hardest-rocking songs in the classic shoegazing oeuvre.  It kicks serious ass.

Like LATB, this is the only song by this band in my playlist.  Fans of Ride and Swervedriver will be horrified, but I basically consider them both One-Hit-Wonder bands.  Which is not really fair, because it's not so much that their other songs are weak, but that these two songs—LTAB and Duel—are so goddamn good, so head-and-shoulders above the rest of their work, that they raise the bar.   I can't listen to any other Ride or Swervedriver songs without wishing they were LTAB or Duel.  I'm sorry.

Like LTAB, Duel relies on a big wall of crunchy guitars for its power, and on pretty harmonies for its hooks.

But unlike LTAB, where the harmonic hook comes in the vocal chorus, in Duel it arrives at 1:33 and 3:14 when the guitars finally relax the minor-chord tension that's been building with a shift into those major-key, Byrds-on-overdrive, jangly power chords.  That's the moment.

I've been listening to this song for years without tiring of it.