It's Okay

Is there a definitive song about Cincinnati? One that truly captures the fraught relationship with being a city both out of time and place? A Midwestern Rust Belt straddling the Southern border of the Mason-Dixon line? A city with the highest per-capita of Fortune 500 Companies with one of the highest poverty indexes? This relationship with Cincinnati truly vexes Singer/Songwriter/Multi-Instrumentalist Eric Dietrich on Sorry Eric's debut album, It's Okay. Composed of members of Vacation, Mardou, Homemade Drugs and Brindle, Sorry Eric tackles this love-hate relationship head-on with spiky, fist-pumping post-punk of the proper-noun dropping "Cincinnati", Evil, Vile Main Street Yuppies" and "It's Okay". Dietrich internalizes these external struggles on declarative spoken-word songs like "Earthly Insults" and "Bicycle Experiments" where characters tackle existential questions following funerals or during suburban bicycle rides. Sorry Eric's pop sensibilities can be best understood in their lineage to New Zealand's Flying Nun Records from the undeniable melodic sensibility and slightly skewed perspective on each song's composition to Robert Scott's (The Bats) painting on the LP cover, the spiritual connection runs deep.