Hello Blue Roses 'self-titled' album

The romantically entwined duo of Dan Bejar (Destoyer, Swan Lake, New Pornographers) and Sydney Vermont (visual artist, Bonaparte vocalist, former Toronto Children’s Choir kid singer) performing under the moniker Hello, Blue Roses have announced the release of their first album. The 13-track debut will be released by Chicago-based label Locust Music. The self-titled disc draws on everything from an unabashed love of 80’s AOR ala Prefab Sprout and Kate Bush to prime Aquarian-age femme folk of the 60’s and 70’s to create an infectious, readymade classic.

“When I listen to the sound of it, I hear European pastoral music butting up against a harsh 80’s reality,” Bejar says. “The Hello, Blue Roses songs are completely untethered to any of the bullshit streams coursing through the scene right now. That’s just how Syd writes them; it’s not her fault. They’re completely melodious, but still so strange. It’s a product of not really caring what people think, but still caring a lot about people.”

“Dan supports every strange idea I have ever had,” says Vermont, “and then we craft it into something to our liking. We hear different things in the songs and try to bring both visions into it, which involves a lot of trust and generosity, because we are very different. It makes for an overall eclectic sound, which still has its own organic logic.”

Hello, Blue Roses’ debut will hit stores on January 22, 2008. In the interim, fans can sample exclusive Hello, Blue Roses tracks on a tour-only split 7” with Frog Eyes due out on Absolutely Kosher in December and a split 7” with kindred Locust Music act across the pond, Starless & Bible Black which will usher in the new year in physical form and see digital release around the holidays. The Roses side will feature the band’s eponymous and punctuation-free anthem “Hello Blue Roses” while Starless & Bible Black offer the cut “Calico” -- a newly recorded wintry affair. This release will be strictly limited and will initially be available via mailorder off of the Locust Music website.

Hello, Blue Roses’ decision to team up with Locust Music is totally apropos given the celebrated label’s wide-eyed approach and Hello, Blue Roses’ own deeply accessible but eclectic sound. “The roster seemed impossibly all over the place, and also not tied down to any era or genre,” Bejar says. “But once you start looking at everything they’ve done, it’s pretty impressive and head-scratching.”

“Outside of the influences of 60’s and 70’s singer/songwriters, Bejar and Vermont are touching on some of the popular music of the 80’s that a lot of us 30-somethings have lived with whether we liked it or not,” says Locust label head Dawson Prater of the Hello, Blue Roses material. Prater continues, “At the heart of it, I think all of us have this repository in our heads where popular music takes root and Hello, Blue Roses has gone there in a totally unironic way. Dan and Sydney have recast the sweetness and mismatched optimism of the music of the Reagan era to the way it should sound, the way this stuff often sounds in our heads -- and that’s what timelessness is all about.”

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Hello Blue Roses - self-titled