Motherfucker, I am Both: “Amen” and “Hallelujah”... by Shearling

From its foundation as a society that used slave labor to produce addictive drugs to fund a religious utopia, the United States has always fascinated itself with original sin. As the proud principal producers and consumers of an economic system that burns the human id as fuel to steamroll the world, we take up our lifetime roles as characters in the epic poetry of Motherfucker, I am Both: “Amen” and “Hallelujah”... by Shearling. This band rises out of the ashes of Sprain, continuing that band’s work of creating spiritually tortured noise rock characterized by extreme emotional ambiguity. We find here a narrative founded upon vice as an inescapable component of life, so intimately relatable and fundamentally human as to block out the light of any supposed perfect divine. Rather than chase down that elusive purity, Shearling embraces and elevates their animal nature, pulling sounds and themes from the American West in the worship of a familiar yet treacherous idol. Our original sin persists, but against what and to what end we may never feel certain.