Sheer Mag

Sheer Mag

Playing Favorites

Third Man

***Playing Favorites is Sheer Mag’s third full-length and first with Third Man Records, the band capitalize on a decade’s worth of devotion to their own collective spirit—a spirit refined in both the sweaty trenches of punk warehouses and the larger-than-life glamour of concert halls—emerging with a dense work of gripping emotions, massive hooks, and masterfully constructed power-pop anthems. This is the record the Philadelphian rock and roll four-piece has always been destined to make.

Sheer Mag

A Distant Call

Wilsuns RC

Sheer Mag return with their sophomore album, A Distant Call. They’re still writing about surviving the current hellscape, but this time around, the politics get extra-personal. The album verges on being a concept piece, and the protagonist resembles frontwoman Tina Halladay. The songs document a particularly alienating time in her life when she was laid off from a job. Broke and newly single, her father passed away, leaving her with more wounds than it felt possible to heal.It’s heavy power-pop so sleek it gleams. “We’ve been waiting to write these songs since we started the band and we were able to take these experiences and build a story out of them,” Halladay says. “A Distant Call makes an argument for socialism on an anecdotal level. We’re talking about how late capitalism alienates and commodifies whatever is in its path without using the term ‘late capitalism.’” Guitarist Matt Palmer and Halladay’s new approach to lyricism extended to the recording process, too. Once the brothers Hart and Kyle Seely had laid down the tracks, Halladay recorded vocals with producer Arthur Rizk (Power Trip, Code Orange).