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Featuring four notable figures from the louder and heavier end of indie rock,
Sweet Apple's music is swaggering and raucous on the surface, but the band first came together as one of the members was dealing with a severe personal crisis. Vocalist and guitarist John Petkovic is the longtime frontman with Cleveland-based rockers
Cobra Verde (he was also a member of
Guided by Voices for a spell, appearing on the album
Mag Earwhig!), and in late 2008, he was having a tough time dealing with the death of his mother after a long illness. Needing to get away from Ohio for a while, Petkovic hopped in his car and began driving East as he chain-smoked cigarettes. While on the road, he got a call from his friend Dave Sweetapple, who plays bass with the stoner rock band
Witch. Petkovic had driven 400 miles by this point, and he was close enough to Sweetapple's home in Vermont to take him up on an offer to stop by and talk. When he showed up at Sweetapple's house, Sweetapple invited over a mutual friend,
J Mascis; best known as the leader of
Dinosaur Jr., he's also played drums with
Witch, and he hired Petkovic to play bass in his project
J Mascis & the Fog.
As the three friends talked,
Mascis suggested the best thing Petkovic could do to deal with his grief was to make music, and suggested he start writing songs for a new band.
Mascis and Sweetapple immediately volunteered to play in Petkovic's new project, and Tim Parnin, one of Petkovic's bandmates from
Cobra Verde, soon stepped in to make the combo a quartet. Calling themselves
Sweet Apple, Petkovic wrote a batch of 25 songs for the band in less than a month, and in rehearsals, they pared the set down to 12 songs and went into the recording studio. The completed album,
Love & Desperation, was released by indie hard rock label Tee Pee Records in April 2010. In November 2012, in honor of the upcoming presidential election,
Sweet Apple regrouped to release a cover of
Alice Cooper's "Elected" on a 7" vinyl single. In February 2013, another single followed, featuring a new song called "Wish You Could Stay (A Little Longer)," featuring guest vocals from
Mark Lanegan. As it turns out, the song was a preview of the next
Sweet Apple album, though the disc wouldn't be released until April 2014; The Golden Age of Glitter showed off a stronger power pop influence than the debut album, and featured more guest vocals from
Lanegan, as well as
Guided by Voices leader
Robert Pollard and
Rachel Haden of
that dog.
Lanegan,
Pollard, and
Haden returned to contribute guest vocals on
Sweet Apple's third album, 2017's
Sing the Night in Sorrow, which also featured guitar work from yet another onetime member of
Guided by Voices,
Doug Gillard. ~ Mark Deming