Swearin' At Phila Moca

Swearin' Swearin’ operates and shines like a well-oiled, pragmatic machine. Their complimentary personalities, solid work-ethic, and similar backgrounds in DIY punk, have helped them thrive. Formed in 2011 in Brooklyn, Allison Crutchfield (guitar) and Kyle Gilbride (guitar) had been making demos for nearly a year before inviting Keith Spencer (bass) into the equation. The trio eventually added longtime friend and Philadelphia resident Jeff Bolt on drums, releasing their demo EP What a Dump shortly thereafter. The demo received instant praise from Brooklyn’s indie punk scene and beyond. It combined the sounds of Gilbride and Crutchfield’s prior bands (Big Soda and P.S. Eliot, respectively) while stretching into new territories of fuzzed guitars and compounded song structures. In 2012, Swearin’ released their debut self-titled LP, on which their dynamic and sound fully starts to emerge and flourish. Here, each member brings their own patterns and rolodex of influences to the table, creating a uniquely inviting and complex album. Crutchfield’s vocals are smooth and her lyrics are sharp and personal. Gilbride produces a wall of layered guitars, saccharine hooks, and his own specific ear in the recording process. (He records and produces all of their music.) Spencer makes his first appearance as a songwriter in the band, delivering some of the most diverse songs to the album (‘Divine Mimosa’ and ‘Kill Em’ with Kindness’). Finally, Jeff Bolt remains powerful and heavy while committing totally to servicing the songs. The Goodbye Party The album received much critical acclaim and the band went on to do several successful US tours. They have since relocated to Philadelphia and are currently working on the upcoming sophomore LP. After spending five years leading DC/Philly-based power-pop band The Ambulars, Michael Cantor needed an outlet for his other songs: the bedroom recordings - noisy lo-fi experiments, meandering somber songs with auxiliary instrumentation (bowed guitar, lap steel guitar, tape collages) all recorded by Cantor in isolation. He relocated to Philadelphia and started releasing home-recordings as The Goodbye Party. This solo project he would later fully flesh out to create his first full length album under that project, Silver Blues. A true labor of love, Cantor recorded most of the album himself, aided by drummer Joey Doubek (Pinkwash). Learning about recording and production as he went, he spent the better part of a year closed up in a makeshift studio, augmenting his album with cassette and analog 4-track recordings. The result is an album that exists within its own universe, one that weaves in and out of itself, floats and sinks, held together by its own internal logic. Silver Blues is full of lush orchestral strings, built on top of degrading cassettes and feedback and ecstatic power-pop anthems that bleed out into vocal dirges. Silver Blues is out December 1 via Salinas Records. Attendant Attendant is the brainchild of Radiator Hospital bassist Jon Rybicki, who began writing for the project after the breakup of his Cleveland-based pop-punk band The Fucking Cops. Relocating to Philadelphia in 2011, Rybicki sought to leave the tropes and hooks of pop-punk to make pop songs with a noisier, weirder sound, drawing from the lo-fi recordings of Sebadoh and Guided by Voices, the sweet two minute pop songs of the Lemonheads and Sugar, and the blind attack of a J Mascis guitar solo. In 2014, Rybicki solidified this sound by orchestrating a unique DIY community recording effort to create a dynamic album that is as much a collaboration as it is a solo album. Recorded by Kyle Gilbride (Swearin') Freaking Out features thirteen area musicians playing on seven tracks. The live band is rounded out by the heavy, hypnotizing energy of Ashley Arnwine on drums (Pinkwash, Waxahatchee), unison vocals and bass guitar from Jen Twigg (the Ambulars) and the maniacal guitar playing of John McLean (Dead Dog, Todd Killingz). Attendant''s Freaking Out (Salinas/Stupid Bag) is out now. Get tickets: http://ticketf.ly/1ABFwy9