SWEET EVENING

JAKARTA’S SUBURBS ARE A BREEDING GROUND FOR MUSICAL MAGIC, AS DYANI PUTRI-ALAN REPORTS

Named after the most beautiful time of day, Jakarta-based quintet Sore is bringing fresh flavor to the Indonesian music scene’s already heady brew. “We’ve always felt that music is best listened to in the evening, when everyone is winding down. ‘Sore’ in English has an element of emotional torment, so there’s that sense of irony as well,” explains singer-guitarist Ade Firza Paloh.

Their story is a familiar one – two young men meet at university, bond over their mutual love of music, meet similar enthusiasts and decide to form a band. Anyone who’s heard Sore will know better than to pigeonhole the group. For starters, all the members are left-handed – the kind of oddball trivia that every band destined for great things needs.

Sore owes much of its appeal to its extraordinary sound. Their soulful re-creation of the melodic sound of 1940s Indonesia is woven through with jazz, rock, indie and psychedelia, as well as ‘golden oldies’, culminating in music that is built to last. Heavily inspired by The Beatles and Bob Dylan, the band’s first album Centralismo garnered moderate commercial success, though it had a much warmer reception from critics.

Time magazine singled out the début as one of the five best Asian albums in 2005.

All five Sore members double up as vocalists, reflecting the band’s belief in taking center stage as a collective. It is precisely this that makes their songs satisfying to a steadily growing fanbase – including, it would appear, The Jakarta Post, which gave their recently released second album Ports of Lima five stars out of five. It looks like the evenings are destined to get even sweeter.
www.myspace.com/soreband