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).
LP $17.50
08/23/2019
***BACK IN STOCK!!! The debut LP from Philadelphia's SMARTHEARTS (members of SHEER MAG, THE GUESTS, DEVIL MASTER, GRAVETURNER). Two rerecorded songs from their 2016 demo alongside eight hot new slabs of pure power pop joy.
LP $14.75
02/08/2019
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received an 8.0 rating from Pitchfork. A tear in the firmament. Beyond the noxious haze of our national nightmare—as structures of social justice and global progress topple in our midst—there lies a faint but undeniable glow in the distance. What is it? Like so many before us we are drawn to the beacon. But only by the bootstraps of our indignation do we go so boldly into the dark to find it. And so SHEER MAG has let the sparks fly since their outset, with an axe to grind against all that clouds the way. A caustic war cry, seething in solidarity with all those that suffer the brunt of ignorance and injustice in an imbalanced system. Both brazen and discrete, loud yet precise, familiar but never quite like this—SHEER MAG crept up from Philadelphia cloaked in bold insignia to channel our social and political moment with grit and groove. Cautious but full of purpose. What is it? By making a music both painfully urgent and spiritually timeworn, SHEER MAG speak to a modern pain: to a people that too feel their flame on the verge of being extinguished, yet choose to burn a bit brighter in spite of that threat. With their debut LP, the cloak has been lifted. It is time to reclaim something that has been taken from us. Here the band rolls up their sleeves, takes to the streets, and demands recompense for a tradition of inequity that's poisoned...
LP $16.00
07/14/2017
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received an 8.3 Best New Reissue rating from Pitchfork. Sheer Mag’s Compilation LP features the Philadelphia rock band’s three seven-inches, released between 2014 and 2016. All twelve songs were recorded onto the same vintage 8-track tape machine, carted to various locations around Philadelphia. The first two were produced in a makeshift studio wedged between two bedrooms in the band’s former South Philly house, while the third came out of a practice space in the Port Richmond neighborhood. Sequenced chronologically, the newly remastered songs reveal a young DIY band finding its sound.
LP $13.00
12/09/2016