Taste Test: Sci-Fi Romance uncage gutting blackness with ‘The War in Me’

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There’s a blackness, almost a Gollum-like creature with gnarly, broken teeth and pale skin, that lurks behind our walls. It’s buried deep inside each of us and waits for that solitary moment to escape. Winding strings across a pathway of dark traditional folk music, Los Angeles independent outfit Sci-Fi Romance ⏤ comprised of musicians Vance Kotrla (guitar, vocals), Mr. Mike (drums) and Jody Stark (cello) ⏤ snuff out all light with a somber performance piece called “The War in Me.” Kotrla’s voice lumbers through the notes as if he himself is barely plodding through life’s rising mud waters, and the arrangement seems to have been stitched to his bones, pulled behind each laborious step. The visual is appropriately grim; the static shot is unsettling but tremendously effective in scraping the outer layers of humanity. Somehow, in Kotrla’s earth-shattering stillness, there is suffocating tragedy and eventually, flowering beauty. “We are none of us a masterpiece / Just works in progress still,” he speaks in an exasperated breath in the final moment. It’s chilling.

“The War in Me” is contained on the band’s latest album, Dreamers & Runaways, out everywhere now.

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