By Damian Gessel
With self-aware honesty as their bow and 10 straightforward, no-nonsense songs as their quiver of harmony-tipped arrows, Lewisburg band The Sweetbriars is aiming to burn it all down.
The album, released on Tuesday, is called “Please Pass The Revolution.” Please take note of it. It rocks. Hard. But with made-for-the-movies lyrical imagery, it also makes you think.
In “No Way Home From Here,” a fist-pumping arena song with single written all over it, teamed songwriters Earl Pickens and Bruce Derr (their voices are so similar it’s often hard to tell who is who) together croon about holding “one red rose and one white rose,” a metaphor fresh as the flowers it invokes.
Elsewhere on the album they harmonize about dissatisfaction and human togetherness, always wondering when that next bend in the road will come and what it might bring.
For The Sweetbriars, one of those questions has already been answered. The bend is here. Lewisburg musicians Pickens and Derr both had considerable success in other projects and as solo artists, but they believe they latched onto something undeniable when they joined forces last Valentine’s Day.
“The music is raw, it’s pure, it’s honest,” said Derr, who plays bass in addition to sharing singing and songwriting duties.
Like the name of the band, the album title came to co-frontman and guitarist Pickens in a dream. But there’s nothing imagined or subtle about its meaning; Pickens, Derr and the rest of The Sweetbriars covet nothing short of world domination.
“This band is the vehicle I’ve been waiting for,” Derr said.
Pickens added: “We believe in this. For me this is more important than any record I’ve ever done. We’re going for it.”
Pickens said the spark was immediate.
“You can’t pretend to be that enthusiastic.”
Pretension wouldn’t have led to Pickens, Derr and the gang wading through line after line, painstakingly adding harmonies to each and every note until their two voices sounded more like one.
“You just don’t hear records like that anymore,” said Derr.
With “Please Pass The Revolution,” The Sweetbriars are banking on throngs of fans taking a dive into their brand of Tom-Petty-meets-Counting Crows meets something achingly modern rock-and-roll.
And once they do, Derr says, like any good magician, “We have some more tricks up our sleeve.”
n E-mail comments to dgessel@dailyitem.com.
