Lore City

Time is cyclical, time is a sandwich, and it’s all happening at once. Lore City duo Laura Mariposa and Eric Bessel originally met ten years prior to their first album, in a photography darkroom of Syracuse University, back when people still got their hands dirty with film. On the last day of school, Eric ran into Laura and spontaneously gave her all of his unused photo paper. She knew it was some sort of sign, so back at home in Chicago, she stuck it under a bed and then promptly forgot about it. Until one day, almost ten years later, after reconnecting with Eric, long-distance dating, and their engagement, she was cleaning out stuff from under the bed, and found the forgotten box of photo paper. Dusty and faded with Eric’s name scrawled in the upper corner, it was like, “I told you so.” Things always come full circle. Or at least, when they do, you can say that. Or sometimes maybe check under your bed for things that might be plotting your future.

The beginnings of Lore City were set into motion when Laura moved to Brooklyn in 2011 to live with Eric. Give a songwriter some of that good old New York City air, and you know what happens. Laura started to come up with some really good shit. She shared her songs with Eric and he liked them, a lot. He asked her to play them all the time. He would sing her lyrics to her while walking down the street. She thought maybe she could direct this enthusiasm. Sitting around their Red Hook apartment, Eric strumming a guitar absentmindedly, talking about his teenage days playing in a ska band, Laura took the lead and said let’s form a group.

The very next day Eric beelined to the guitar store, and they found a practice space practically under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, so it was all very exciting. But early days are tough. There was a lot of standing around, singing Cure covers, some tears, and finally, they broke through with their first songs including “Unknown” and the NYC-anthem “Whole Lot.” Recognizing the sprouts of something great, they packed it up and spent the Summer of 2012 in the woods of upstate New York writing and recording their first album, Absence & Time.

Since the woods don’t really have a good music scene, that Fall they moved back to Laura’s old stomping grounds, Chicago. The duo immediately started writing material for the second album and established a presence within the city — fitting in somewhere between the shoegaze and garage rock craze, they honed their live set and made some neat friends. Helping hands emerged, and Already Dead Tapes & Records officially released their first album on blue cassette in March of 2013. A few months later, they were offered to release their second album on vinyl by a joint effort of the aforementioned and 1980 Records. What followed was a whirlwind of shows and recording in a couple different studios, eventually rounding out the last half of the album at Handwritten Recording. Within a year of making their first album, Lore City had churned out their second, Kill Your Dreams.

Since the release of their second album, Lore City continues to play shows in it’s support, and is already a few songs into writing a third album. Sticking to their nomadic stigma, the duo is now in the process of settling down in the Pacific Northwest, where they hope to befriend some of their most favorite bands. We’d say their names here, but we don’t want to jinx it. Instead, we’ll just sleep with their records under the bed, and hope that in time, things come full circle.