This week’s Listening Party features Philadelphia-based Swearin’ & their upcoming show on Thursday, March 6th at Cake Shop. Listening Party is a curated weekly column promoting music discovery and encouraging concert-going. Featuring someone we’ve been jamming out to and we recommend to the masses, each Listening Party artist has an upcoming show at a local NYC venue. Grab your headphones and read on.
WHO: Allison Crutchfield, Kyle Gilbride, Keith Spencer, and Jeff Bolt
THEY SAY: “pop-punk and lo-fi”
WE SAY: Melodic influx of 90’s punk throwbacks with modern indie-rock undertones
FROM: Philadelphia, NY
ONLINE: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Swearin/250793881642442
RECENT WORK: Surfin’ Strange, released November, 2013 via Salinas Records
UPCOMING SHOW: At Cake Shop next Thursday, March 6th, with Cassie Ramone & Arm Candy.
If you are yearning to flood your eardrums with the sounds you loved back in the 90’s, shaky layers of distortion, sweet melodies and well-crafted lyrics, Swearin’ is the modern-day version of your cravings. The band’s members come from a long list of excellent bands including P.S. Eliot, Big Soda, Bad Blood Revival, Bad Banana, Big Eyes, and as you probably know, lead singer Allison Crutchfield’s twin sister, Katie, plays as Waxahatchee. Clearly musical talent runs in these musical as well as nuclear families.
With an even blend of male and female vocals, the band teeters on pop-punk, but digs deep alternative roots, flushing their songs with indie-rock with sounds and guitar lines reminiscent of Built to Spill, Modest Mouse, and the Breeders. Their song “Dust in the Gold Sack,” below, bleeds through the speakers, pulling at heart strings with emotional vocals and air-bending instrumental melodies. Allison Crutchfield’s spitting yet melodic singing fits in perfectly with the ever-changing mesh of jangly, mellow, distorted and feedback-y backdrop of tangled guitars and baselines.
You’ll agree that Swearin’s sing-a-long style harmonies and bouncing melodies are nostalgic at least, and jaw-droopingly epic at most. If you want to feel swept up in the 90’s without any of the complications of true teenage angst, check them out at Cake Shop on the 6th. It’ll be totally worth it.