How Sweet It Is

  Sweet Bulbs, the next in Brooklyn's line of indie pop breakouts, is on a mission to bring some messy melodies to a stage near you. The band is led by songwriter Michael Sheffield, formerly of hardcore band Michael Jordan, yet takes a different route than that act's harsh, youthful noise explosions. Sweet Bulbs is all about creating a feeling that's close to pop music without actually being radio friendly. It could easily fool you.  

A budding contemporary of Cocteau Twins or Jesus and Mary Chain, Sweet Bulbs formed because Sheffield was in a bind. Michael Jordan had broken up, and he had a month to prepare a new act. He wrote a batch of songs that would become Sweet Bulbs’ standby set list. Those tracks will appear on the band’s self-titled first album, which should be available in early November via Blackburn Recordings.

“I had booked a show for a band I didn’t have,” explains Sheffield. “It was very last minute. I just really wanted to organize this event and see a bunch of bands that I like at the Silent Barn, which is one of my favorite venues. I didn’t have a band. I had graduated from college a couple months before and was living with my parents. I really didn’t have anything better to do than to write 10 or 11 songs and force my friends to learn them.”

Whereas other lo-fi indie pop acts tend to cloak their songs in reverb-laden atmospherics, Sweet Bulbs takes a harsher, more concrete route. Its best track so far is probably the blog favorite “Springstung,” a bouncy number that highlights the act’s muddy yet shimmering guitars. It sounds as if every instrument besides the percussion got dropped in a swamp on the way to the studio. It also points to the potential for Sweet Bulbs as a legitimate pop band, yet the group prefers to stay underground and avoid anything too commercial.

“The more packed and DIY with people bringing in their own beer, the better,” Sheffield says when asked what kinds of shows are his favorite. “We’ve been playing classier shows than my previous bands. We’ll play at a nice bar where there’s no PBR. It feels a little insincere. We feel like a Motley Crüe cover band when playing shows like that. I love playing places like Death By Audio or Monster Island—any environment where you feel like the show could be shut down any minute.”

While favoring distortion and raw sound over the mask of reverb might be Sweet Bulbs’ most defining characteristic when compared to other Slumberlandworshiping acts, the band also has unique weapons in the female vocals of Inna Mkrtycheva and the unhinged, nearinsane drumming of Ray Weiss. Weiss hovers aggressively over his reduced set like he’s a lanky defensive lineman that’s ready to pounce. He also ups the joyous atmosphere at the band’s gigs by making the shows more memorable. In the near future, Sweet Bulbs plans to take its current incarnation on the road.

“Because it’s the poppiest act we’ve ever been in, we are interested in seeing how far we can take it in sort of a practical joke way,” says Sheffield. “I wonder how far and obnoxious we could take this. I think we really want to play places we’ve never played. We’d love to travel and play music for people at this point.”

No, Sweet Bulbs isn’t about to go changing a formula that already works and seems to have a built-in set of peers like The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, The Beets and Knight School, that share its aesthetics. Like many current Brooklyn acts, the band just wants to make pop music in its own way.

“It’s all about this noisy pop sound. A lot of bands are really killing it. They are kind of resurrecting the Slumberland sound from the early ’90s,” he reflects. “But it’s all pop when it comes down to it. We grew up in the ’90s and like punk bands from that era. It’s that college rock sound.”

-- Sweet Bulbs Oct. 29, The Tortilla Factory, 271 Starr St. (betw. Wyckoff & Nicholas Aves.), Brooklyn, no phone; 8, $TBA. Also Oct. 30 at 171 Lombardy.