by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
Philadelphia is in it's own golden age of punk experimentation. Truthfully, it's an embarrassment of riches, case in point, Sieve. There's no shortage of scrappy young bands making their own disorienting pop music, and Sieve are quickly rising to the top of the pack. The quartet are set to release, Three Secrets, their debut EP this Friday, May 11th via the always reliable Fire Talk Records, a short but effective introduction to their own rabbit-hole of disjointed punk and twee charm. The five songs that make up the record play off one another with a lo-fi simplicity and minimalism, clamoring with jerky rhythms offset by sweet melodies. The band dig into their grooves, creating a rapid succession of wonky head-spaces, each pleasantly abrasive and deceptively accessible.
"The Beekeeper," the record's second single is brought to life with a vibrant video (directed by Boothe Carlson) and some exceptional costume design, each of the band's four members dressed in a singular color scheme for a day at the playground. There's some top notch video editing that you can't help but love, and the whole thing gives me some fantastically weird vibes like crossing the wires between those early 90's Nickelodeon shorts between shows, Teletubbies, and Wes Anderson. The song itself is just as undeniably enjoyable, wrapping gorgeous melodies around a singular phrase of guitar and keys, progressively tangling itself as the song uses its confined space to maximize their minimalist landscape.
As life gets heavier around us, it's refreshing to see a band having fun and embracing their freedom to make music that dares to venture into the unexplored, but keeps things just pop enough that listening to the concise release on repeat feels like a gift, and never a chore.
Sieve's Three Secrets is out May 11th via Fire Talk Records.