Swearin'

With gifted songwriting that captured both the excitement and uncertainty of early life, Swearin' recast the sound and ethos of D.I.Y. punk into something more emotionally complex as their journey as a band twisted through the years. The group began in 2011, rising immediately out of the ashes of singer/guitarist Allison Crutchfield's band P.S. Eliot, a group Crutchfield had started with her twin sister, Katie, when they were still teenagers in Birmingham, Alabama. Shortly after P.S. Eliot dissolved, Allison moved to Brooklyn with former Big Soda member Kyle Gilbride and the two started Swearin'. The band was ferociously active between 2011 and 2014, relocating to Philadelphia and working closely with Katie Crutchfield's highly successful Waxahatchee solo project during a busy, fruitful time. Swearin' broke up in 2015, only to reunite two years later, signing to Merge and delivering their third album, Fall into the Sun. Co-led by guitarist/vocalist duo Allison Crutchfield and Kyle Gilbride, Swearin' formed in 2011, rounded out by bassist Keith Spencer and drummer Jeff Bolt. The band quickly recorded the fuzzy six-song demo What a Dump, laying out the blueprint for their sound that approached the angular, melodic guitar pop of '90s influences with an emotional urgency and explosive tempos that fit nicely into the 2010s D.I.Y. punk and house-show scene. What a Dump surfaced in December of 2011, and a proper self-titled LP followed the next year. The band toured often and released the sophomore album Surfing Strange in late 2013. In 2015, Crutchfield and Gilbride, who had been a couple for the entirety of Swearin', decided to end their relationship, breaking up the band along with it. Crutchfield spent the next few years in a state of transition, playing as part of her sister's band in Waxahatchee, relocating to Los Angeles, and signing to Merge Records for the release of a solo album. That album, Tourist in This Town, was released in early 2017. As the years passed, hard feelings subsided, and by the middle of 2017 Crutchfield, Gilbride, and Bolt reconvened, discussing what it would take to reunite the band. Rather than return to the unrecorded material they'd begun work on before the breakup, Swearin' (now working as a trio in the studio) decided to mine the ups and downs of their volatile years off for inspiration. The resultant songs showed a more mature, refined version of the band, who also signed on with Merge for the late-2018 release of their third album, Fall into the Sun. ~ Fred Thomas