Photo courtesy of Sweet Crude
Fairy wings. That’s what I remember most about the first time I saw Sweet Crude perform. It was 2014, and my first year attending Bayou Boogaloo, and I was waiting for Tank & the Bangas (who, coincidentally, would later embark on a national tour with Sweet Crude) with a plateful of alligator tacos when Sam Craft approached the mic, violin in hand, fairy wings strapped around his shoulders. He said something about how they were a band who liked to have fun, liked to get a little weird with their sets, hence the wings. Six years, two new albums, and one record deal later, Sweet Crude still dons iconic costumes onstage. Only, instead of fairy wings, they wear matching custom-made ensembles, usually reserved for a debut at their favorite venue in the world: Jazz Fest.
This year, instead of performing on the Gentilly Stage at the New Orleans Fair Grounds and embarking on the scheduled summer tour for their new album, Officiel//Artificiel, Sweet Crude celebrated the record’s release with a front porch performance, the band’s six members each six feet apart as they livestreamed the show for followers on social media. It almost didn’t happen; they thought about pushing back the release date, unsure if the album would resonate with audiences in the midst of a pandemic.
“It works with what we’re going through as a society because we’re all alone with ourselves, whether we like it or not, right now, digging deep and figuring out what we want and need from ourselves." — Alexis Marceaux
Turns out, an album resounding with self-reflection and re-evaluations of reality is just what the world needed right now.
Together, the twelve tracks on Officiel//Artificiel trace the introspective process of “discovering the authentic self,” as lead vocalists and instrumentalists Sam Craft and Alexis Marceaux put it. Released in late April, the record feels like a soundtrack for this time, where the world as we know it has fundamentally shifted. On levels both collective and personal, the COVID-19 pandemic has stripped away everything and forced us to take a good, hard look at what is left.
“It works with what we’re going through as a society because we’re all alone with ourselves, whether we like it or not, right now, digging deep and figuring out what we want and need from ourselves,” said Marceaux. “I think that has been a challenge for a lot of us in the band in the last several years, so I’m glad that we were able to, without really trying, find that somatic thing.”
Officiel//Artificiel, released by Verve Forecast Records, is a departure from the bilingual group’s 2017 debut full-length album, Créatures. While Officiel//Artificiel maintains the percussion-heavy, high-energy call and response performance style Sweet Crude has come to be known for onstage, it also slows things down a pace in order to wade deeper into this dichotomy between real and unreal. If Créatures is the party, Officiel//Artificiel is the word-of-mouth after party that lasts twice as long because that’s when things really get interesting. At times nostalgic and tender, as in the track “Sun Sept”’s recalling of childhood days spent playing in the streets of New Orleans as a tropical storm approaches; at others, the album is a poignant and forceful coming-to-terms with a faulty relationship, such as in “Ultimatum” and “Impuissance,” (which translates to “Powerlessness”)—both tracks placing Marceaux’s powerhouse vocals front and center. And still, it finds room to build tension in darker, raucous anthems like “Porkupine” and “Rougarou.” As a whole, the release is an ever-earnest exploration of the ways vulnerability and volatility can overlap, and the unapologetic catharsis that results.
Creating a cohesive record about self-discovery with six people may seem antithetical, but Sweet Crude thrives on collaboration. Sonically, they know when to make space for one another and when to pile on instrumentally. Bringing in Los Angeles producer Sonny Diperri, who’s worked with the likes of Portugal. The Man, Animal Collective, and Dirty Projectors, proved to be their best decision throughout the process of creating the record, said Marceaux. Diperri brought an experienced ear to their music while encouraging them to experiment sonically, allowing for a more raw, unrefined sound by recording demos at home and keeping many of the original takes in the final track. This unconventional, home-made approach is reminiscent of another recently released album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple. Interestingly enough, Officiel//Artificiel was largely influenced by Apple’s earlier work, namely her 1996 single “Sleep to Dream” from her debut album Tidal. Seeking to emulate the songwriter’s signature broodiness and her approach to percussive engineering, “We attempted to let that run through every track on the record in some way, shape or form,” said Craft.
[Read this: Tank and the Bangas bring home-grown goodness from New Orleans to America's ears.]
Singing in half Louisiana French, half English, the New Orleans-based band certainly draws from aspects of Cajun culture, from their bilingualism to the use of Cajun folklore in their lyrics. However, their modern pop melodies defy paradigms for traditional Cajun or classic New Orleans music, setting them apart in a state known for its musical talent and diversity. Craft likens the group’s musical hybridity to a Frankenstein of sorts, which served as the inspiration for the cover art of Officiel//Artificiel (which was created by Kristen Sorace and Joe Spix). This melding or collapsing of genre enables Sweet Crude to reach new audiences outside of Louisiana who may not otherwise be exposed to the culture here.
“I’ve been this one thing all of this time, but it’s time now that I shed this cocoon and do my butterfly thing." —Sam Craft
“I think we all were on the wavelength that it needed to be celebratory in some way,” said Craft on how Sweet Crude found their distinct sound. “If we needed to invite people to a party, we knew that it needed to be exuberant. We knew that the emotions needed to be running high. We did not want it to be shoegazing. We didn’t want it to be static. We knew it needed to be dynamic, and vibrant, and all of these things. I think we all kind of see eye to eye on that.”
Sweet Crude’s mission is not necessarily to preserve Louisiana French, but to present the language in an accessible, contemporary context—pop music—where it can adapt and continue.
“We intentionally decided that we’re going to make it so that we gave this language in this culture a totally different set of clothes to put on, so that it could be looked at as something that’s a living document and not just a repeat of what has happened,” continued Craft, who is the only fluent band member; the rest are learning the language as they go. “I think it pays homage to all of these things that have happened musically and culturally. We intentionally decided we’re going to put this thing in a spaceship and send it out to space just to see how far it can go, because we’re dealing with what has largely been an un-updated dialect of French.”
Though they aren’t yet able to tour for Officiel//Artificiel, Sweet Crude has adapted to the digital landscape by hosting livestreams via the band’s Facebook or Instagram accounts several times a week. Craft and Marceaux alternate among playing a set—likely the first time an acoustic guitar has been introduced to the band’s instrument repertoire—showing followers how a particular track was produced in the studio, or translating the track’s French lyrics for non-French speaking fans.
During one livestream, the lyrics to the dreamy track “Skin” drift through the computer speakers. “Starting today/I’m peeling the plastic away/I’m looking for confidence, competence, confluence, common sense, a contradiction to the commonplace,” Craft and Marceaux sing in unison. “I’ve been this one thing all of this time, but it’s time now that I shed this cocoon and do my butterfly thing,” summarized Craft. To this longtime listener, Officiel//Artificiel feels less like a discovery of self than it does as a return. There’s a sense of recognition which manifests in the third track, “Déballez,” or “Unpack.” The chorus builds and dips then builds once more until it erupts in shouts of the following affirmation not once, not twice, but nine times, each more punctuated than the last: “I see you I see you I see you I see you I see you I see you I see you I see you!” You were always there. You can show up for yourself, learn how to unpack, to peel away the layers of plastic, and emerge for real.
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