Sweet Crude

There are six musicians in the raucous pop ensemble Sweet Crude, but their ultimate goal is duality. The lyrics are bilingual, with French and English lyrics sometimes sharing space in one song. As a gang of bodies in motion onstage, their clamor of percussion and shouts whips up the dance floor in contagious physical joy – but the tunes lend themselves as well to deep listening, revealing complex layers of both craft and content. Of course, there’s the band name itself: a reference to the petroleum export of Sweet Crude’s home state of Louisiana, an unintentionally poetic linking of two concepts operating in seeming opposition. And like the title of Sweet Crude’s latest album – Officiel//Artificiel - when everything comes together, the product is more than the sum of the parts.