There’s a certain element of mythos to Sheer Mag. Conceived while its members were living together in a Philadelphia spot called “The Nuthouse” and dedicated to going big, the band has always been a little larger-than-life—there’s a story bouncing around about them spray-painting the band’s metal-esque logo onto a white bed sheet to hang in the living room, as both a statement of purpose and banner of unified vision. At the Nuthouse, they began recording a set of audacious DIY singles that would eventually be released together on COMPILATION (I, II, II). Later, in 2017, the band erupted with their full-length debut album, Need to Feel Your Love—a mix of calls to the street and calls to lovers that pulled from ‘70s rock, power pop and classic punk in equal measure. They followed this with 2019’s A Distant Call, which opens with a yowl from vocalist Tina Halladay and has a cover like something you’d see from Hawkwind or Boston. Now, they’re freshly-signed to Third Man Records after reaching out to them directly about working together—an occasion the label celebrated with the statement “This is gonna be fun as shit.”
Sheer Mag’s new album, Playing Favorites, begins on a more subdued note than their previous work, if that word can even be held in a conversation about Sheer Mag. Its title-track opener returns to some of their softer sounds, and lets the tenderness that comes from a decade of collaborating together shine. On “Playing Favorites,” guitar work from Kyle Seely and Matt Palmer glimmers as Halladay recounts packing up for another tour while reveling in the magic of getting this far. It’s a song that begs for a long stretch of highway, and like all great road trip tracks, it’s a reminder that the best part is the people on the journey with you.
That journey takes Sheer Mag to fascinating new places. Playing Favorites is at its most experimental on “Mechanical Garden,” a six-minute disco groove that opens with a bang before giving way to string arrangements and a guest guitar showcase by Mdou Moctar. As in its title, the disparate musical elements here work surprisingly well together—and Moctar’s dreamy desert blues emerge as a kind of Eden after the track’s hard rock prelude, while the atmospheric lyrics chart a nightlife journey fresh off the Sunset Strip as Halladay considers both sides of losing yourself to the beat. “Watch the wounded flowers sway, watch them, watch them waste away,” Halladay calls, before landing on a nihilistic conclusion that seems straight out of a Sonic Youth song: “Everyone’s breaking down, it’s gumming up the works / I guess I’m gonna take a cab to the city.”
Playing Favorites also makes pit stops at more familiar haunts, like the dive bars and pool tables of “All Lined Up” and the arena rock kiss-offs “Eat It and Beat It” and “Don’t Come Looking.” But like its title track, the songs here have a reflective edge—a new hint of sadness or introspection that puts the heights they climb into sharp relief. Initially recorded during a difficult time for all four band members, the album comes from trying to rig sadness into joy and make both elements sing. As Palmer puts it, it’s the result of trying to “figure out how to have fun when you actually feel miserable.”
That tension between fun and miserable is perfect for love songs, and the ones on Playing Favorites revel in it. Named after the operatic rom-com of the same name, the psychedelic power ballad “Moonstruck” spins in dizzying feelings and movie magic, with lap-steel soaring over heartbeat drums. There’s a creeping sense, though, that those feelings might not be reciprocated—when you leave someone’s place in the middle of the night in the pouring rain, it’s hard not to think about why you left. In true Sheer Mag fashion, the crush on “Moonstruck” hits in the midst of a bar fight, in time with smashing a disco ball; the ooey-gooey emotions are equally thrilling, and maybe equally violent. Halladay’s plea for commitment could fit in a bar fight, too: “Come on, you son of a bitch!”
There’s a guardedness to all this brawling and self-aware self-destruction, of course, a fear of vulnerability that both can mask. In lesser hands, it’d go unaddressed in the name of focusing on the fun, but Sheer Mag are acutely aware of it—and in the wake of “Mechanical Garden,” that seed of introspection blossoms across three odes to domesticity and connection, however unlikely they might be. “Paper Time” and “Tea on the Kettle” flourish in the tiny rituals of a relationship while promising, Springsteen-style, to make things better—“Someday, when we can save more than pennies and dimes, we’ll go somewhere gentle,” Halladay promises on “Kettle.”
By the end of closing track “When You Get Back,” though, those promises come up empty. Over the daydreaming and the doo-wop background harmonies, Halladay cuts to the chase: “When you get back, I’ll let you know just what you mean to me.” Bookending the album’s grateful intro, this poignant finale is a cautionary tale against not saying what you mean, a reminder of how important the compassion that beams on “Playing Favorites” is. You can show you care by backing someone in a fight, or by making them tea, but maybe it’s best to just do so outright—when you love people, tell them.
Annie Parnell is a writer, radio host and audio producer based in Richmond, Virginia. Her writing has appeared in FLOOD Magazine, The Virginia Literary Review and elsewhere. Annie can be found online @avparnell and avparnell.com.
