Sore Eros

Recently I have been interested in the lesser highlighted aspects of what we typically refer to as the psychedelic experience; loneliness, regret, longing, emptiness. Like most things related to psychedelia, I find the expression in music to resonate the most. Not too long ago I wrote about Big Blood and their ability to capture the sense of uncertainty and yearning when an altered state (whatever the kind) has worn off. Perfectly timed with this reflection is my late discovery of another group that has been examining the tender and vulnerable aspects of psychedelia; Sore Eros.

Much recent psych-folk is communal, a sense of a shared experience inside the sacred grove. Sore Eros tends towards something a little more isolated, where even if there are other people grooving with the same spirits, we easily get locked inside our own psyche. What makes Sore Eros so remarkable is their ability to take this very personal space and craft it into something that feels familiar. This isn't solipsism by any means. It's about the ability to recognize that no matter how particular our own experience is, there is something that we all can recognize. Maybe it's sadness, maybe it's hope. I had no idea, in the moment, what the heck it was you were going through, but on the other side we can rest in the knowledge that no matter how personal, we were never really alone.

Sore Eros began as a bedroom-recording project by Robert Robinson, but is now a full outfit including Robert (guitar and vocals), Adam Langellotti (bass and keyboards), Jeff Morkeski (guitar), Matt Jugenheimer (drums) and Matt Brown (samples/snyths) with most of the songs written by Robinson and Langellotti.

They have a new album due out on Shdwply  Records next month, and are currently working on an EP called Just Fuzz which will be out early 2011 on Blackburn Recordings.

--Listen to "Tounge Tied"--

Robinson was kind enough to answer a few questions about his music and underground music in general.

The Moore Collection of Underground Comix

Wonderful, albeit small, sampling of covers of underground comix from the The Moore Collection of Underground Comix, as well as a searchable database of the entire collection with publishing information. The collection is housed at the California Polytechnic State University library.

Big Blood: Dead Songs

One of the more interesting aspects of psychedelic music in general is it's potential to both induce and narrate, in a sense, altered states of consciousness. This sensibility ranges from the druggy to the transcendental, the communal to the personal, the urban to the rural, the synthetic to the organic, the ecstatic to the reflective, much like the experience itself.

One thing that is often lacking from the whole range of psychedelic music, and in particular psych-folk, is a reflection on the psychedelic experience when the altered state has worn off, when the phenomenal world intrudes, when heartache and loneliness and feelings of uncertainty pervade. This authentic, often overlooked aspect for meaning beyond the mundane is something that pervades the new album Dead Songs by the due of Colleen Kinsella and Caleb Mulkerin,  known here as Big Blood.

The cracked and fragile qualities of psychedelia has its musical precursors to be sure; Syd Barrett, Skip Spence, and more recently Blithe Sons and some of the other Jewelled Antler Collective recordings  walked the shaky ground between melancholy and ecstasy. But Big Blood has captured something deeper, something that contains a real authentic longing, with shadows of joy, and the way making music can act as a container for feelings that can overwhelm. And then, before you know it, it's the music itself that makes you remember how to hope.

What is also wonderful is that while Big Blood work in somewhat a psych-folk accent, they don't forget their rock roots. There is great vocal work, particularly by Kinsella. She can go from raucous to folk-gospel with ease. This is one of those records that makes it impossible to think you are missing anything out in the mainstream of music.

--Listen to the track New Eyes
--Buy Dead Songs here