Need to Feel Your Love

Sheer Mag give you everything--socially conscious, sexually confident rock’n’roll that nods to pub rock, punk, funk, blues and 80s indie--and make it even more than the sum of its parts.

Need to Feel Your Love is an album that not only shreds, but feels prescient, too.

With Need To Feel Your Love, the band broadens its horizons without losing what made ‘em so promising in the first place. That’s always a tricky line to walk, and Sheer Mag does it with gritty grace.

As musically fun and riff-heavy as it is lyrically direct and meaningful, Need to Feel Your Love is exactly the debut album fans wanted from Sheer Mag--not to mention one of the best of 2017 so far.

It’s just as intense in terms of either volume or passion as their self-released EPs, but the album’s somewhat surprising emotional and stylistic eclecticism prevent the band’s library of overcharged ’70s-style riffs or its maximalist energy, epitomized by singer Tina Halladay’s wailing typhoon of a voice, from becoming too fatiguing.

Need To Feel Your Love is more than just a terrific debut, it also happens to be of the best damn rock records released this year. What makes it work so well has to do with the sincerity of the band themselves.

Need to Feel Your Love is an excellent debut, and if this record is any indication, Sheer Mag is set to continue their trend of making great music.

An endearing work of art from a band that undoubtedly have more magic up their sleeve, as they've consistently shown in the past. And as this album shows, they have a lot of love to share, and for us to feel.

Sheer Mag’s heady mixture of influences shouldn’t work. And yet, their tireless curiosity and genuine affection for rock song forms is what separates Need to Feel Your Love from sounding like a conventional tribute.

Awesome the riffs may be, one might only want to hear them in small bursts lest they risk being worn out. Still, there’s enough variation to stave off sameness, and the band is smart enough to switch it up from track-to-track.

Need to Feel Your Love continues to dance along the line separating proto-metal and power pop, but leans more often toward the latter. Bassist Hart Seely’s slightly crisper production lets you better savor the jangly acoustic strums underpinning the power chords, while liberating Halladay’s singing from the payphone fidelity of those earlier recordings.

They’re not just a crack musical unit--Kyle Seely and Matt Palmer, especially, have developed into a guitar duo to rival prime Thin Lizzy--the quintet feel like a great band-as-gang for our times. Morally upstanding without being dour or didactic, in control of their own image and destiny and capable of tuning to the key of life.

Just good old-fashioned hard rock that's guilt free and easy to love.

Ultimately, Need to Feel Your Love remains a statement of defiance from a band full of it.

The result is a wildly primal and consistently brilliant rock'n'roll record. [Aug 2017, p.112]

The latter song [“Meet Me In The Street”] sets the tone for the record, as it rails against the ugliness of privilege (“Silver spoon suckers headed for a fall / And justice for all”) and encourages an uprising against authority. Equally galvanizing is “Suffer Me,” a song about the Stonewall Riots, and “Expect The Bayonet,” which is about marginalized groups banding together to fight oppression: “If you don’t give us the ballot / Expect the bayonet.”

Sheer Mag is a band that’s unafraid to feel, whether it’s desperation, rage, or overwhelming love. Over the course of an urgent debut, they let their guard down and embrace their emotions, showing the rest of us that we could all afford to as well.

Need to Feel Your Love is musically propulsive and provides evidence to the talk that a guitar band in 2017 can be a source of ingenuity without pulling excessive tricks and mutations upon the craft.

At times it relies too heavily on retro stylings, with a resulting sometimes rather one-dimensional sheen, meaning that the more serious messages the band are expressing can get lost in the mix. But as far as ’70s tailored rousing rock in 2017 goes, Sheer Mag’s work is best in class.

It's a thrilling start but, after the breathless thrills of the first six songs, things tail off sharply. Still, it's hard to begrudge them. [Aug 2017, p.37]

On Need to Feel Your Love, that power is there, but its effect is slightly diminished by a few overly long songs and the number of tracks.

Ultimately Need To Feel Your Love is an unashamedly retro flavoured affair, but it's one that’s worth tasting.