Sheer Agony (Noah)

Let me be honest here: I’ve been hip-dip in mixtape after glorious mixtape of old, weird, obscure music and I’ve barely taken the time to poke my head out of my cubbyhole to acknowledge that contemporary music is still hurtling along. That said, I took a moment away from the world of mixtape podcasts I’ve newly discovered, to dig around and see what I might be missing. Enter Sheer Agony. You can categorize things as Nerd Rock now, like it’s an actual genre that someone came up with that is applied to music (what a world huh?), and though I try to avoid just dropping made-up genres on music, Sheer Agony does have that bookish twinge of what I imagine Nerd Rock would be. It feels like the end of thrashy, leather-clad punk rock in the early 80s, when the Talking Heads were showing people that subversive music didn’t have to be all sweat and punching. It has that twang of a guitar string broke on purpose but pushed into this tight, almost mathematical little parade of off-kilter music that you’d find yourself somehow shaking your hips to. It’s not just that either though, somehow, in two minutes mind you, they squish in a raging guitar solo, a burst of like 80s white-guy soul, and then a step back into that nerd-rock-dance-party we all got our hands stamped for. Nice way to kick off the year.

:Sheer Agony – I Have A Dream: