The Secret Life of Sofia

I met Bryan from Man in Gray at The Art of Shooting's recent show at Sin-é and he introduced me to Kyle from The Secret Life of Sofia...that's basically how I was introduced to this band. Kyle handed me a limited edition copy of their EP (my first reaction on the spot was that I liked the artwork) and I said I'd check it out. It took me weeks to finally listen to it, mainly because I left it at work and was out of town for a few days, but now that I finally have given it a chance I really like the four songs on it. Funny because I actually had a feeling, just based on the look and packaging of the EP as well as the name of the band, that I'd really like their music. A little bit about them from their MySpace page:

"And in their clutches she became a tree..." -The Hypostasis of the Archons

Who is Sofia? Contrary to your first reaction, she is not some pretty, sad looking indie-rock girl at all. Google the strange words above and you will encounter an obscure gnostic text. After too much reading you will find that Sofia, not quite a person, is more like a esoteric spiritual concept, unaligned with any familiar conception of faith.

Thus, it is with an individualized and almost homegrown spirituality that The Secret Life of Sofia hopes to infuse its music. Writing songs about high altitude mountaineering, the life and death of grizzly man Timothy Treadwell, and feeling out of place in the NYC music scene (among other things, of course) definitely sets the band far apart from most of its Brooklyn neighbors.

The Secret Life of Sofia has a sound that reminds me of Clearlake and I can hear influences like The Cure and Mogwai (some Beatles too). Their music is simple and icily stark and so effective - just how I like it. Some days are diamonds, some days beg for songs like these. In fact I have a feeling that (if the weather turns out as they say it will) The Secret Life of Sofia is going to be the perfect soundtrack to this weekend here in New York. Check it: I've compared a band's music to this before, but I could see some of the songs by The Secret Life of Sofia being the soundtrack to the wintry landscape paintings by Caspar David Friedrich. The ones where everything is all massive and dark and snowy and humans are nothing more than a small part of the whole. Like this one and this one.

Listen:
"Hospital Inside Me"
"Around in Ways"

See them LIVE:
Saturday the 11th of Feb (tomorrow night!) @ The Big Art Show at Sputnik with Man in Gray