SWEETIE
Lily Keenan (she/her), Rikki Clark (she/her), Janae Beer (she/her), Lucy Warriner (she/her)
Written by Juliette Salom (she/her)
Photography credits: David Mahon
Speaking to Demure writer Juliette Salom (she/her) from the 339 bus as it traverses the streets of Eora/Sydney on her way to her day job, Lily Keenan (she/her) discusses what it’s like to make a band and make music with your best mates. Influenced by the likes of PJ Harvey, Goat Girl, gothic fiction and old spaghetti westerns, Sweetie’s sound is the kind that’s impossible not to move your body around to.
Eora
Perhaps there is no greater privilege when it comes to making art than to be able to make it with your mates. That’s exactly what Eora-based punk/rock band Sweetie has stumbled upon – this perfect collision of treasured friendship and tremendous music. You can hear it in their songs, you can see it in them on stage, you can sense it in the way that no one gets this good at what they do without loving the people they’re doing it with.
Lily Keenan (vocals, guitar) and Rikki Clark (drummer) have been friends since they were thirteen, Lily says, describing Rikki as nothing less than “the love of my life”. And so with the addition of Janae Beer (bass) – a friend, Lily describes, as someone “we wanted to see more” – and Lucy Warriner (guitar) – “a new friend we were obsessed with” – the sweetest of punk-rock groups was created.
“We started the band as housemates in lockdown, aimless, heartbroken and with lots of free time on our hands,” Lily says, of a time in which nothing meant more to the world and to the individuals in it than a bit of TLC from mates. “We started jamming for something to do, and a way to spend time with the women we admired.” Killing time became killing the game quick enough, with what started as a way to connect to the community they wanted to make art within evolving into a way of creating art for a community much further beyond that.
It seems that friendship and community has played no small part in the building blocks of this quickly rising quartet. Represented by grassroots label Blossom Rot Records and surrounded by what Lily describes as “an extremely supportive community” in Eora/Sydney, the band are moving through the local music industry with a kind of enthused optimism and hungry ambition that permeates through their sound.
After releasing their sophomore EP Punch the Shark in 2023 – a follow up to their debut EP Collision, released in 2022 – Sweetie is quickly making ground all over Eora and beyond. Having just played at Naarm’s Brunswick Music Festival with fellow label-sister band Bad Bangs, Sweetie is gearing up for a show in Eora at the Lansdowne on March 22.
Whilst seeing Sweetie play live is to pay witness to the frenetic energy of controlled chaos they’ve mastered so well in their performance, the band has somehow managed to bottle up this experience for all those listening from home. Described as a collection of work that “captures all the energy and intensity of Sweetie’s live show”, Punch the Shark is an EP worthy of listening to in no other volume but loud. Blasted through car speakers with the windows down, through headphones on power-walks around the streets, at home on surround sound to wake up all your neighbours – wherever you listen to it, make sure it’s somewhere you can move your body, because it’ll be hard not to.
This dynamism of sound that Punch the Shark emits is in part a result of the band’s recording process. Whilst the EP is made up of songs that Sweetie has been playing since they started, the music “evolved so much by the time we cut them to this record,” Lily says. “Our recording process is basically to play together live in a room, so this EP came together firstly by playing many many shows and developing the songs in front of a live audience.” However, when it came to recording the tracks, Lily says, “we wanted to capture the energy and total chaotic fun we feel at our shows, so apart from the vocals, these songs are mostly one live take.”
Working with, who Lily describes as “the lord of rock himself”, Jonathan Boulet on Punch the Shark, the band have managed to capture the textures and nuances of their raw live sound in a recorded format, bringing the experience of a Sweetie show to your car, your headphones, your home. It’s not hard to hear all the layers of sonic exploration that thrash up against each other throughout the tracks, Lily’s controlled yet explosive vocals interweaving lyrical poetry to grab hold of all the sound that paves the way across the tracks.
Described by one listener as “pulling [Sweetie] toward the grisly end of their flagship devo-country-punk style,” Punch the Shark may be able to bring you something close to the live experience of the sweetest band out of Eora right now, but nothing will compare to the real-life performance of Sweetie. Their raw textures and emotive injections of seeing the band connect to each other, connect to their songs, connect to the crowd, when they play a show is not to be underestimated. Best experienced at a gig venue with bodies thrown around and music more than loud and, of course, best mates very near, Sweetie is one to not be missed.
Buy tickets to see Sweetie play here.
Listen to Sweetie here.
Follow Sweetie here.
