Down Is Up discusses music that falls slightly under the radar of our usual coverage: demos and self-releases, as well as output from small or overlooked labels and communities. This week, Jenn Pelly overviews a few old but worthy projects by members of Swearin' and an active offshoot.
Photo by Jesse Riggins
Sometimes tracing a band's roots can be just as exciting as hearing their demo for the first time—getting lost in the world they've created and seeing how all the pieces fit together. Swearin', the New York/Philly-based fuzz-pop band, have a sizable back catalogue to explore. In light of the band's great new LP, Surfing Strange, out last week through Salinas/Wichita, here's a brief survey of some pre-Swearin' endeavors from the band's primary songwriters Allison Crutchfield and Kyle Gilbride, plus a listen at songwriter/bassist Keith Spencer's current side-project. Some of these songs could explain why Swearin' are often erroneously stamped with a "pop-punk" label. Many of them are a lot scrappier than anything you'll find on Strange, but this group's underground output is inspiring in its own right. The writing can be endearing, witty, and ruthlessly catchy, harkening back to a fully independent, band-as-life ethos that feels all too uncommon nowadays.
01 Big Soda
In 2011, Kyle Gilbride and his short-lived band Big Soda released a three-song demo as well as the six-song Paper Route; the band also included Brian Schleyer, who now plays in the Babies alongside Woods' Kevin Morby and Vivian Girls' Cassie Ramone. Big Soda is a worthy introduction here, having produced Swearin's titular track (above), a compressed rock song busting with ripchord abandon and smart, slacker angst. This band's songs are packed with little pains of confusion and self-doubt, wasted days and boring nights, those gruelingly unclear moments of waiting and thinking that come with implausible crushes.
"You Are the Worst" carries the sense of transience that marked Swearin's debut—wishing someone was back in town, crashing on floors in unfamiliar states. The guitar crunch drops out at all the right moments as Gilbride snarls through this incredible song of love and "hate": "You left to catch a ride/ Cause you're the worst/ I wanted to leave my life/ and be wherever you were." It's not hard to see how some of Swearin's best ideas were brewing in these songs.
Swearin'. Photo by Cynthia Schemmer
02 Bad Banana
As heard on Waxahatchee's Cerulean Salt track "Blue Pt. II", there's something mesmerizing about hearing singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield's voice mix with that of her twin sister Allison. Before Waxahatchee and Swearin' were full-time projects, there was Bad Banana, a 2010-2011 pop-punk project where both Crutchfields played guitar and wrote songs. (In their other shared band, Katie wrote songs and Allison played drums.) Kyle Gilbride also played guitar in Bad Banana. In interviews, both songwriters have framed this as a not-so-serious band, but actually these songs are surprisingly resonant, wildly catchy, and at times very funny. Their entire (incredibly titled) 2010 demo Crushfield is worth checking out (it's free to download here) and their 2011 Cry About It 7" for Puzzle Pieces is at Bandcamp (and below).
"Stand Next to Me", sung by Allison, is an amazing punk-love account of a drunken meeting with a crush who also happens to be in your favorite band. "You seem to be in high demand/ But you're talking to me about your favorite bands/ Descendents and Dinosaur Jr," Allison sings. They'd be perfect together, she is sure, because they would never be together—always on tour, or crashing on someone's couch. "STAY@HOMESIREN" is another highlight, wherein Allison and Katie collectively expel some negative energy towards someone whose lifestyle is a little different from their own. "Your friends are talking too much," they deadpan. "Your boyfriend is a such a drag." As with many Bad Banana lines, the heartening songwriting chemistry sounds effortless, and there's an unfiltered attitude to it all that oftentimes only comes through when you're around the people who know you best.
03 Great Thunder
Keith Spencer, who also drums for Waxahatchee, has more of a mysterious presence in Swearin'. In my recent interview with the band, he was credited for the new record's heavier aesthetic, and Kyle noted his taste for obscure songwriters. Keith sings softly on his songs, but the instrumentation is generally heavier; before Swearin', he sang and played in the abrasive, Killdozer-worship band called Bad Blood Revival that cited influences like Jesus Lizard, Melvins, and Butthole Surfers. Their album Tongue Twisting Tunes for Tiny Tots is here.
Keith says his triology of songs written for Surfing Strange (two made it onto the record) were inspired by the Beach Boys and meant to flow into each other like a suite. There was an elegy for Dennis Wilson ("Surfing Strange") and a song about Brian Wilson ("Melanoma"), with a somber link in the middle ("Glare of the Sun") written entirely in a shower in Madrid. His approach—louder, more abstract, but ultimately personal and intimate in nature—marks much of the material from his other project with Katie Crutchfield, Great Thunder. Check out two songs from their recent tape (below), released through Swearin' drummer Jeff Bolt's cassette label Stupid Bag. Great Thunder's double album, Groovy Kinda Love, is out next month from Salinas.
04 P.S. Eliot
In the more melodic corners of contemporary U.S. punk, the two records from P.S. Eliot are absolutely essential—2009's emotional, folk-tinged Introverted Romance In Our Troubled Minds, and 2011's more straightforward, Deal-indebted Sadie. (Both records, released on Salinas, are on Spotify and very much worth seeking out.) Though the band was guided by Katie Crutchfield's existential, ambitious, no-future songwriting, with Allison on drums and backing vocals, it can be interesting and certainly revealing to enter 70 minutes of the creative environment that spawned an artist.