Picked to Click 2010

The Sweets' songs crackle with the analog warmth those origins suggest, each one an exercise in spare, guitar-driven garage-punk and delivered in a quick, energetic snap. Grumdahl hands me a mix CD with a sampling of the rockabilly and surf records he had in constant rotation while he was writing, and the band names alone evoke a distinctive sound: Bird Rollins, the Versatones, Jody Reynolds and the Storms. Not that those names necessarily come to mind first for everybody; Grumdahl admits he's been compared to the Pulp Fiction soundtrack on multiple occasions.

Having started as a solo venture, the Sweets quickly expanded into a two-piece to include His Mischief drummer Jeff Brown once they started gigging last year, but the model remains a lean, flexible one. "He just has an ability to change gears in a way that... I feel I can kind of do anything," Grumdahl enthuses. "I could show him a song once and he'd play it perfect the second time."

Dan Corrigan for City Pages

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Which is an ideal situation, given the band's aesthetic: "Some of that sort of polished, rehearsed shit is kind of anti what I'm doing. It's like, I sort of want the songs recorded to be one thing and live to be whatever the fuck they are."