Very few groups, if any in Boston, can sound like they’re playing in a dusty basement and rolling in on the clouds at the same time. But indie folk duo Sweet Petunia manages to do just that on its debut album “Foggy Mountain Mental Breakdown.”
From a sunny opening track that delights to the closing track “Puke” that cries “it’s all gone wrong,” Mairead Guy and Maddy Simpson have created an epic that grabs a listener by the hand – first to dance, then to descend.
“The way the album arcs kind of follows our trajectory of sonic development as a band,” Guy says. “When we first began playing together our focus was definitely more so on traditional – or at least traditional sounding – music.”
Guy was raised in Richmond, Virginia, at the heart of the city’s Celtic and old-time scene. They attended Berklee College of Music, where they met Simpson in 2018 and formed Sweet Petunia.
“As we dove deeper into the Boston DIY scene and began to feel more comfortable exploring different sounds, our music became more punk influenced and started touching on heavier topics and heavier sounds,” Guy says.
Instrumentation expands as the record progresses with guitars, synths, flutes and drums contributing to the mix. Across the songs, a harmony arises between folk music and indie rock.
Adds Simpson, “I think there are a lot of parallels, actually, between folk music and the DIY [indie rock] scene. The folk tradition is a largely oral one passed down from generation to generation, and is therefore pretty accessible to anyone regardless of classic training, and it’s historically been pretty leftist and anticapitalist. You could say similar things about DIY – it’s accessible to those without formal education and politically, it’s a pretty similar match.”
After all, doesn’t “three chords and the truth” sound equally believable coming from a Nashville picker as it does a leather-clad punk? Sweet Petunia’s “Foggy Mountain Mental Breakdown” is available wherever you get your music.
Sweet Petunia’s local recommendations:
- Dinos
- Grace Givertz
- Wedding Gift
Ryan DiLello is a musician and writer based in Somerville. You can submit your music for coverage by annoying him at a show or emailing ryan.hearfirst@gmail.com.
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