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9. Sherbet Tone
Sounds Like: 1970s rock meets millennial indie rock.
Sherbet Tone is not inspired by synesthesia—the neurological condition that causes one’s senses to merge, leading to phenomena like linking numbers or letters with specific colors, or visualizing musical notes as specific colors. Rather, the band’s name comes from a chapter title that Haruki Murakami used in his surreal novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
One could be forgiven for wondering about the name after listening to the band’s midcentury jangle rock-meets-2000s indie rock sound—as bright, sweet and tart as an ice cream cone. Vocalist and songwriter Stephen Leisy, whose previous projects include Moon Shy and previous WW Best New Bands honoree Genders, attributes Sherbet Tone’s sunny sound to his Rickenbacker guitar, known for producing warm tones. He met the musicians who would be his bandmates throughout the 2010s: drummer Corey Ciresi (alumnus of Best New Bands winner Monarques) as a bar regular and barber; bass player Annie Miranda through Moon Shy in 2018; and guitar player Conner O’Shea through Miranda and her defunct Weezer cover band. Sherbet Tone’s laid-back, easygoing vibes might also just be a manifestation of the group’s friendships.
“I just kind of write the songs that I write,” Leisy says of Sherbet Tone’s sound. “I feel kind of limited as a songwriter in that I can’t work for a licensing studio and go, ‘Here’s the genre and I’m going to nail it.’ I just write songs that sound like my songs, but I show songs to the band and we make the songs kind of poppy and funny.”
Adds O’Shea: “I err more on the side that you wrote these songs in a time of your life where those are the chords that you chose and this is how you approach things in the world, where you go, ‘Whoa, that’s pretty dark,’ but you still find positivity, which is nice.”
Leisy wrote Sherbet Tone’s early songs as a solo project during the pandemic lockdown era, with an intentionally quieter sound so he could write and play while his baby slept. Leisy favored records by The Birds at this time, while Ciresi—influenced heavily by Liberty DeVitto—tried stepping out of his more typical power-pop mode. The group released a five-track EP, Dead Moon T-Shirt, in February. While at times lyrically expressing feelings of doubt and insecurity, the EP’s overall sound is still bright and uplifting.
“Our influences have been pretty fluid,” Ciresi says, “and things have changed because we’re willing to try each other’s ideas.”
