Eros and the Eschaton are one of the brightest shooting stars in the Colorado Springs music scene today. After moving to town three years ago, following the release of their acclaimed debut album Home Address for Civil War (2013), Kate Perdoni and Adam Hawkins dove right into the fertile, thrumming cultural scene that is steadily growing in the Springs. As a newly-expanded five-piece band (with Alex Koshak on drums, Mitchell Macura on keys and Ryan Spradlin on bass), Eros and the Eschaton are preparing to release their second album on Bar/None Records, Weight of Matter, on August 19.
The new record dazzles with a bigger sound than the ethereal shoegaze duets and fuzzy hum of the first record, which arose from organic recording sessions in a North Carolina rental house over a two year period. Weight of Matter was created in a much shorter period of time, in Hawkins’ Right Heel Music studio in Old Colorado City, yet it showcases the band sounding bigger and shinier than ever as they continue to grow creatively.
The album dips its toes into neo-psychedelia and post-punk, with wide open spaces woven throughout, but the process of going from a duo to a five-piece band was not without its growing pains. “This album feels more grown-up than our last album,” Hawkins says. “Home Address for Civil War had a lot of whimsy and freedom about it. This album required our using a few more of the skills we’ve acquired en route to becoming adults; we needed to continue through some of the struggles.”
The end result is an eminently-listenable album that still keeps surprising throughout with the variety of different sounds that resist summative definition. “Every song sounds like its own little island in some way, so all the surprises fit into the whole,” Perdoni muses.
“We wanted to leave room to be creative in the studio and to let the songs show us where they wanted to go,” Hawkins adds. “And we wanted to allow each member to bring their own ideas and parts to the table.”
Eros and the Eschaton have always been intense performers live, visibly enmeshed and transported by the process of creating songs together in a live setting. Playing the new songs with three additional band members leads not only to a larger and more kinetic sound, but also to some surprising agency. “Now when we’re playing live, it feels very freeing to only be responsible for one instrument,” Perdoni says. “I can go wild and experiment on stage, which is something that had to be more controlled when it was just the two of us, and I was bringing three keyboards and drum elements to each show.”
The release of the new album brings several opportunities to see the band create and recreate these songs in the explosive live environment. Eros and the Eschaton will be featured at the Underground Music Showcase in Denver (our state’s premier indie music festival, now in its 16th year) on Saturday night, July 30, and return to the Springs for the First Friday art gallery crawl on Aug. 5 at the Fine Arts Center. The hometown album release show is Aug. 26 at the DIY venue Flux Capacitor in the Springs, and a Denver album release show follows Aug. 27 at the Larimer Lounge. You can follow the band’s complete calendar of shows here.
—by Heather Powell Browne
Listen to the first two singles from Weight of Matter
