Sheer Mag - Playing Favorites (2024) [Hi-Res]

Sheer Mag have labored to carve out a discernibly singular position within the canon of contemporary rock: toggling with ease between the refined flourishes of a “connoisseur’s band” and the ecstatic colloquialism of populist songwriting—yet displaying no strict loyalty to either camp—their sound, while oft-referenced, is unmistakably and immediately recognizable as theirs alone.

On Playing Favorites, Sheer Mag’s third full-length and first with Third Man Records, the band capitalize on a decade’s worth of devotion to their own collective spirit—a spirit refined in both the sweaty trenches of punk warehouses and the larger-than-life glamor of concert halls—emerging with a dense work of gripping emotions, massive hooks, and masterfully constructed power-pop anthems. Playing Favorites expands with a sense of undeniable vitality, buoyed by rock and roll’s singular capacity to channel a relentless compassion for human life: as singer Tina Halladay puts it, “Nobody seems to write straight up rock bangers anymore—more than anything else, we want this record to put huge, catchy songwriting front and center.” This is the record the Philadelphian rock and roll four-piece has always been destined to make.