The Sweater Set
Fly on the Wall
Local Woman Records
Time to slow down, take it easy, and work though that backlog of music I’ve been dodging. And Fly on the Wall might just be the most relaxing thing I’ve heard in 2020.
The Sweater Set sports just two members, Sara Curtin and Maureen Andary, and they slowly lament loneliness and no internet on “Being Alone.” Acoustic guitar begins a languid back beat, and suddenly there’s a lover holding her hostage, hostage in a positive, loving relation. “Take your wrist and cuff yours to mine. It’s easily letting you steal all my time…” Sexy, maybe creepy, but either way it’s a romance made for unembellished acoustic arrangement.
The ins and outs of love occupy these ladies -the meetings, the break ups, and the minutia of daily life that underlines all positive relationships. These lyrics tell stories: not “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” stories, but more like The Great Gatsby stories of incomplete love. Sweater Set celebrates the mundane, the breakup, and the chugging though trouble.
In this period of social isolation, here we see an attitude that will carry us through and make us feel better about ourselves. The Sweater Set: a hopeful beam of musical light to guide us through the present darkness.
