Alt-Folk Outfit Sci-Fi Romance Oct. 19 Album "Dreamers & Runaways"

New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Los Angeles-based alt-folk band Sci-Fi Romance's new album 'Dreamers & Runaways" expands on the textured blend of folk, Americana, punk, and metal influences the band has showcased on its previous releases. It is also the record where the social consciousness that has run beneath the surface of much of the band's work takes center stage.

This record was written during the tumult after the 2016 U.S. election, and recorded in winter '17/spring '18, against a backdrop of near-constant local and national protest. That reality courses throughout these songs, as do characters struggling with feelings that have to find an outlet suggested by the album's title — to dream of something better and fight for it, or to run elsewhere in hopes of finding a place, and a better fit.

Combining guitars, layered cello performances, stacked drums and percussion, with evocative baritone vocals, the band has expanded its sound with mult-instrumentalist Vance Kotrla's addition of piano, vibraphone, Theremin, and assorted other musical esoterica.

In addition to the nine original tracks, the band turns in a nearly unrecognizable performance of grunge icons Temple of the Dog's 1991 song "Wooden Jesus." "It's a song that has meant a lot to me since I was a teenager," Kotrla says, "and I'd done it on my own, acoustically, at a few shows. After Chris Cornell died, though, I knew we had to include it as a tribute, however modest, to the profound effect his work had on me as a musician, and as a person in some of my bleaker moments."

The band's previous albums have drawn comparisons to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, American Records-era Johnny Cash, and contemporary folk-influenced acts like The Decemberists.