Sweet

It’s hard to believe that more than 50 years have passed since Joan Baez first stepped onto the public stage and became the voice of America’s conscience. From her early support of Martin Luther King’s civil rights campaign to the platform she provided to the suffering citizens of Sarajevo, there hasn’t been a major social-justice movement in the past half-century that Baez hasn’t championed. She primarily has been identified with the 1960s, and consequently, some of her recent charitable projects haven’t been at the forefront of the mainstream radar. In her new documentary How Sweet the Sound, Mary Wharton took the steps that are necessary to reverse this trend.

Where a slow-burning, word of mouth campaign was hugely beneficial to Jon Allen – his debut album, 2009’s Dead Man’s Suit, was given a sizeable leg-up by one track’s use in a Land Rover campaign, while champions included Jo Whiley, Jools Holland and Emmylou Harris – second album Sweet Defeat not only has the task of matching this, but is also burdened with the albatross of assumed instant impact. But it seems as though that’s the last thing Allen is worried about. While his passport may substantiate the on-paper Britishness of this Hampshire-born artist, his yarns and philosophies paint a picture of a grizzled American folk musician, decades of abandon behind him. Sweet Defeat, in this vein, employs good honest rock'n'roll ideals, actioned via a collection of simple, folksy melodies.

After a totally groovylicious debut album that to my surprise I found to be a whole lotta fun, SWEET SMOKE officially disbanded not really taking their efforts too seriously despite there being a lot of interest in their stylistic approach. These guys were true flower children of the 60s and went as far as moving to Germany to form a commune near the city of Emmerich near the Dutch border…

Sweet hit the peak of their powers on Desolation Boulevard, a wonderfully lightweight collection of fizzy melodies and big, dumb hooks. Essentially, the album consists of three dynamic singles buoyed by a bunch of filler, but those singles – "Ballroom Blitz," "The 6-Teens," and "Fox on the Run" – are addictive slices of bubblegum glam rock…

Building on the momentum caused from the runaway success of Desolation Boulevard, Sweet forged ahead and shoved Give Us a Wink out to satisfy their growing legions of rabid fans. Doing it all without the aid of Chinn & Chapman, they truly held their destiny in their own hands for the very first time…