The boys of The Sweet Release – Austin Sheridan, Jimmy James, Cliff Clifford, Mikey Marchand and Corey Chabot – have all been friends in various combinations since they were kids growing up in North and Regular Attleboro. As Mikey puts it, they’re like a brotherhood. They met in each other’s garages messing around on guitars or on the ball field. They remind me of the smart asses I’d spend my days after school with, sneaking cigarettes, watching dirty movies and talking that big talk about being rock stars.
As I spoke to them last month about their recent EP, I was also reminded of a line from This is Spinal Tap. Apathetic and ill-fated drummer Mick Shrimpton confesses to Rob Reiner’s documentarian that “As long as I have sex and drugs I can do without rock and roll.” At a glance one might think the same about The Sweet Release. Take their EP, adorned with a simple yet evocative illustration of a woman sticking her tongue out from between full lips and stacked with a neat little pile of multicolored drugs. It’s even called We’re Coming, a title so on the nose that to call it a double entendre would be to over think it.
The music itself is loud, fast and fun, but it’s depraved, sex-addled and consumed with illicit over consumption of women and substances.
So sure, based on all that you could say that The Sweet Release are a bunch of hedonistic boneheads, but that would be giving them too little credit. “We like to see how much people who don’t know us at all can judge us to the max,” explains Austin.
The lyrical content of their EP, as well as their on-stage mania, are all drenched in a premeditated, Molly-laced flop sweat. They’ve taken irony, long the weapon of choice for the hipster elite, and pressed it up against the temple of macho-sexist party rock.
Shots were offered promptly upon my entering Sweet Release HQ shortly after 7pm on a Monday evening – which I politely declined in the name of journalistic integrity or something – but they remained articulate and honest about their mission to simultaneously expose their audience while entertaining them.
Austin continues, “We’re all about entertainment, but what has it all come to? Sex and drugs. As much as those things are great there’s more to life. As much as we love that stuff, we’re mocking it. People are all about how much they can party, and that’s not the way to live because you’re just gonna crash and burn.”
It’s half contempt and half capitulation for what they know people want to hear. Taking it at face value only proves their point, but enjoying it doesn’t condemn you in their eyes. They’ll even cop to a bit of hypocrisy on their part. After all, who are they to poo poo the shallow state of popular music while ensconced in a cloud of inebriation?
Despite their extracurricular habits, or perhaps even fueled by them, The Sweet Release are stone cold workaholics who generate material faster than they can record it. “We want to play all the time, every day,” says Jimmy. “Every time we practice we write a song. If only we were able to be in a studio and record every time, we’d have so much.”
People have made grand comparisons between The Sweet Release and certain rock luminaries, comparisons they’re humbled by but refuse to put too much stock into. From where I’m standing, the band resembles Ween, if only in terms of a shared, impish ethos. Theirs is a similarly wicked spirit: provocative, unpredictable and gleefully self-destructive. They’re young and untamed, so they’ve obviously got life firmly by the balls. As long as they can keep that grip, I think that anarchic energy will serve them well. And as long as you’re game for it, it’s hell of a lot of fun to watch.
Catch The Sweet Release February 13 at The Fatt Squirrel, 150 Chestnut Street. 21+ with Pals and Sasquatch and the Sick-a-billys
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