Start Listening To: Sweeping Promises
Sweeping Promises will keep you on your toes with their best stressed-out new wave music.
Though Lira Mondal and Caufield Schnug have been producing music and engaging in various DIY projects together for over a decade now, Sweeping Promises is the one that really popped. Punks at night and Madonna-lovers by day, they gave birth to their latest wunderkind in the disused and reverberant concrete laboratory in Cambridge, MA. Inspired by social despair, state of the flux and non-formulaic formula, after a series of serious experimentation, last year, they’ve synthesized a debut album, ‘Hunger For a Way Out’. Theatrical at times, beepy-boppy at best, the record knocks you out off your feet with its mono-mixing and speedy minimalism. Post-pandemic, Lira and Caufield are back to making more promises. Finger’s crossed, we’ll hear them soon.
Can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?
We are Lira and Caufield. We started Sweeping Promises in Boston and it is like stressed-out new wave music with occasional nouveau pop cinematics.
How did it all start?
We’ve been making music together for 13 years. We started in a small town in central Arkansas. We re-established ourselves in Boston in 2012, and started many bands there.
If you were to describe your sound to someone who’d never heard you before, what would you say?
It is punk-minded music, we try to keep the instruments non-formulaic yet really basic, and the voice is un-shrouded, shall we say!
What was it like recording in a disused concrete laboratory?
It was sonically and spiritually fortunate.
What inspires your music?
Social despair, getting things done, and the visionary dreams of punks that came before.
Can you tell us something interesting about the band that doesn’t have anything to do with music?
Lira is a pastry chef and chocolatier/chocolate-maker, and Caufield continues to attempt a PhD.
What advice would you give for anyone trying to achieve a similar sound to your band?
You won’t need more than one microphone.
If your band were a film or TV show which would it be?
Either like a micromanaged 70s structuralist film or something on the campier side, maybe Fellini-esque. That said, we mostly binge Friday Night Lights these days.
Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it’s important to you?
We have rediscovered Madonna and appreciate her music’s scintillating clarity.
What do you hate right now?
Institutionalism.
What do you love right now?
Jabari hot sauce.
What comes next in the Sweeping Promises story?
More music, more promises.
Is there any new music from 2021 that you’re enjoying?
Yes, all fellow Feel It releases. Haven’t been listening to as much punk in past months; liked electronic albums by Foodman; been loving Hélène Barbier’s album Regulus, Sven Wunder’s album Natura Morta, and Dean Blunt’s Black Metal 2.
Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?
We are excited to visit those of you on the East Coast.
