Photo Credit: Michael Wolever
The punk rock lifestyle is synonymous with nonstop partying, excessive drinking and shiny leather jackets covered in safety pins. Yet while those aesthetics have always been the face of punk, the genre’s do it yourself (DIY) ethos has always been just as crucial to its identity—even if those self-imposed values aren’t always easy to maintain when punk rockers face the trials and tribulations of impending stardom.
Philadelphia’s Sheer Mag is a rock ’n’ roll band with an ever-growing reach. The band last played Milwaukee in April 2015 to a tiny crowd at the dive bar Bremen Café. Last month, the band performed to a crowd of thousands at Coachella. They’ve performed on late-night TV and have been profiled in Rolling Stone. Their rise to indie-rock stardom has been rapid, and they’ve only continued to pick up the pace.
Led by soulful vocalist Tina Halladay, Sheer Mag’s sound is unlike most of their contemporaries. The band is frequently compared to arena rock gods Thin Lizzy, and their power-poppy melodies pay tribute to the genre’s founding fathers. Their production style is reminiscent of rock’s glory days; their analog-tracked tunes possess a grittiness rarely heard in 2018. Even through high-fidelity headphones or Bluetooth speakers, the tracks sound like they’re being spun off a dusty old turntable.
Though their sound is derivative of rock ’n’ roll’s heyday, Sheer Mag’s lyrical content looks to decades past. Their politically charged lyrics separate their anthems from those of their guitar-licking predecessors. The sleazy world of hard rock has been appropriated by a socially conscious generation, and Sheer Mag has traded in the genre’s longstanding misogyny and homophobia for groovy storytelling.
On Need to Feel Your Love, the band’s most recent release, tracks about lesser-known historical events take center stage. The murder of anti-Nazi activist Sophie Scholl and the riots at Stonewall in New York City may now be in the distant past, but their context remains relevant in the current political climate.
“I think with a lot of those kinds of histories, the story really hasn’t been told, and it’s being kind of hidden,” says Halladay. “It’s like an old cliché, but that is why things like that repeat themselves. No one is learning from it because it’s being hidden and not talked about. They’re all important things that we can look to and learn from. They’re mistakes you don’t want to make again.”
Sheer Mag’s political sensibility extends far beyond the band’s songwriting. The five-piece are committed to operating almost completely independently. After three EPs and one full-length album, the band remains unsigned to a major label. Near the beginning of their career, they actively resisted hype and avoided press. “We just felt a little bit foolish doing interviews because we didn’t even have a full-length record out—we just had the seven inches,” says Halladay. “We just kind of wanted to do it for real when we put the record out. I think that was the point we were waiting for.”
The band has no manager and only recently hired a publicist. Halladay says she hopes Sheer Mag’s commitment to independence can inspire other bands to blaze their own trails, too. “We just want to do it to show that it is possible to have your own terms,” she says. “You don’t have to just stick to this model of what bands are supposed to do. We’re trying to make other people realize that it’s not written in stone. You can still have your ethics, do what you feel is right and move forward as a band. You don’t have to just give in.”
As their popularity continues to rise, Halladay says Sheer Mag remains committed to keeping their shows accessible and their platform morally sound. The band fights to keep ticket prices low in order to appeal to fans of all income levels, and their T-shirts are union-made. Halladay says her bandmates have always been keen on doing things a certain way.
“I don’t think we’ll ever compromise,” she says. “I don’t think that Sheer Mag will be Sheer Mag if we don’t have the morals that we’ve stood by—that we all have for ourselves as individuals. I don’t think those will go away.”
Sheer Mag headline Cactus Club on Friday, May 18, with Fury and Red Death at 9 p.m.
