Since 2022, the Denver psych-rockers have been known as busy bodies in the local DIY indie circuit, playing out as much as possible, while regularly pushing out new music. The band's 2023 debut, Forbidden Fruit, served as a taste of what’s to come, and now the slick-sounding quartet is back with its sophomore follow-up, The Hive, set to be released on Friday, June 13.
Over the past year, the group’s shared four of the seven songs as singles from the upcoming concept album, which centers around the inner machinations and eventual collapse of a bee colony. Drummer Jay Waldrop came up with the initial idea about how the honey-producing insects operate in much the same way as we humans do, if you think about it.
“Connecting the animal kingdom to us has always been interesting to me,” he says. “Mainly because we feel like we’re super far apart or different than animals, but I think we’re closer than we think. Maybe as individuals we’re not, but as a species.”
“We’re like apes that have an insect mind in how we organize our society,” adds bassist Drew Morse. “I don’t know how that happened, if we got injected with ant DNA from aliens or what.”
The bandmates — also including guitarist-vocalist Eliseo Salinas and guitarist Mauro Hernandez — took Waldrop’s writing prompt and ran with it in coming up with stories told from the perspectives of worker and drone bees, as well as the rise and fall of the queen bee.
“It isn’t all strictly linear but there is a progression from the beginning, like the smaller perspective of each bee going through something, then the end is a bigger perspective of the hive collapsing,” Morse explains, adding the band pulled from themes of “political disruption and society falling apart.”
“We just found that it melded in perfectly with every aspect of the songwriting process,” Salinas says.
It was drummer Jay Waldrop who offered the initial inspiration behind the bee-centric record.
Courtesy Jesus Ortiz
For example, the track “Compound Vision” outlines the story of a queen bee that rose to the comb throne after being fed mind-expanding royal honey as a larva and the ensuing insecurity and existential struggle of being bestowed such power without a choice. “It’s a very mystical kind of thing,” Morse says of the approach and execution for that one in particular.
So while it’s not necessarily a straightforward protest record — though the song “Trash Wave” does explicitly address the fuckery that’s happening at home and globally — The Hive is Sour Magic’s sonic response to the swarm happening around them.
“That hive mind is a big thing that’s happening right now, too, with all the obvious stuff in Los Angeles and all over the country. I feel like a lot of people follow that hive mind and they don’t think about the repercussions. It’s important to think for yourself and not just go along with what most people are doing. That can be dangerous,” Waldrop shares.
“It’s also just a really big perspective of everything’s that happening in the world and all the danger that people are in,” he continues, citing the heavy-handed military response to LA’s recent ICE protests. “Honestly, abolish ICE. That’s a perfect example. They’re all following a hive mind and not thinking for themselves.”
“Yeah, they’re being wasps,” Hernandez adds. “They’re not being cute honeybees; they’re being nasty wasps.”
And not just figuratively. For the record, a similar ICE Out! demonstration was held at the State Capitol Building on June 10, and another one is being held on Saturday, June 14. Get your pregame in on Friday the 13th, when Sour Magic plays a release show at Skylark Lounge with support from Planet Of The Little Green Men, Stereo Ontario and Moonlight Bloom. Matt O’Koren, the drummer for Moonlight Bloom, is also sitting in as percussionist for Sour Magic.
If you haven’t heard the four-piece’s ear honey before, it’s very similar to the brand emitting out of Perth’s indie-psych scene — a funky fusion of surf and hard rock.
“Chocolate & Shrooms” is a trippy Fear and Loathing-esque serenade, which the band brought further to life with a music video starring Kate Fern, the vocalist-bassist of Denver’s May Be Fern. Shot at hi-dive, the final cut also features cameos from local players in Moonlight Bloom, Los Toms and Tarantula Bill. Seductive devils and a torch-juggler riding a unicycle also roam throughout the weird endless summer night out.
Then there’s the latest teaser, “Silver Sands,” a breezy road-trip love song that also concerns microplastics littering beach shores more and more.
So if The Hive sounds like a wild ride, it’s because it is. But living on the psych side allows Sour Magic to address more serious subjects through heady-hitting tuneage. “We’re not going Rage Against the Machine with it,” Salinas says.
“It’s more easily disguisable. You can talk about different themes without being too on the nose about it,” he continues. “You can be mystical about it in a weird way with the music. You can get away with that a little more in the psych realm.”
What Sonic Magic will come up with next is anyone’s guess. But with twenty more potential songs already waiting in the wax, it sure to be strangely sweet.
“It’s almost like any song we come out with,” Salinas concludes, “people will be surprised.”
Sour Magic, with Planet of Little Green Men, Stereo Ontario and Moonlight Bloom, 7:30 p.m. Friday, June 13, Skylark Lounge, 140 South Broadway. Tickets are $15.
