SheerMag: (l–r)Tina Halladay,Kyle Seely,Matt Palmerand HartSeely
NATALIEPISERCHIO
FOR awhile there Sheer Mag were the last great American indie band, releasing singles, EPs, compilations and at least two classic albums on their own shoestring Wilsun RC imprint based out of Fishtown, Philadelphia. But it’s only fitting that they finally signed on the dotted line with Jack White’s Third Man.
Though they’re not quite ready for the label’s hand-crafted, lathe-cut, heavyweight vinyl treatment –the quintessential Sheer Mag format you feel might still be abusted-up, unspooled old cassette you find at the side of the road outside agas station somewhere on I-10 you could say that Sheer Mag are the true spiritual heirs of The White Strpes.
If the Stripes’ artfully homespun, high-concept primitivism was the perfect expression of the USA’s garage-band soul at the turn of the century, then the Philly quartet are the modern equivalent. Both the Mag and the Stripes are bands that have thrived on limitations. In fact, what mono was for Jack and Meg, you might say compression is for Sheer Mag. Look at the wave form for “Eat It And Beat It”, the second track on Playing Favorites, and it’s as solidly brickwalled as the Eastern State Penitentiary –none of the rich dynamic range that’s come into favour since the end of the CD-era loudness wars. It’s the sound of late-night AM radio sometime in the late 1970s/early ’80s, where hard rock, power pop, country, new wave, disco and even alittle prog have been impacted together into diamondhard nuggets consisting of pop hooks, gutbucket rock’n’roll and demented, defiant joy.
It’s part of Sheer Mag’s irresistible charm that they continue to find thrilling new ways of traversing the same dirt track chicanes of verse, chorus, bridge and solo. In fact the Seely brothers, the engine room and writers of Sheer Mag’s tunes, might be the smartest pop formalists this side of Jack Antonoff.