Hello, Blue Roses: The Portrait is Finished and I Have Failed to Capture Your Beauty...
Locust
2008
Rating:


The New Pornographers and Destroyer band member Dan Bejar has garnered most of the press for his latest side project Hello, Blue Roses, but the band is fronted and led by Bejar's girlfriend, visual-artist-turned-folk-artist Sydney Vermont. Vermont writes, sings and plays the acoustic guitar and flute for all of the songs on the wordily titled "The Portrait is Finished and I Have Failed to Capture Your Beauty..." (only "Hymn," a cover of a Kevin Ayers song, is the work of another) while Bejar is credited with the musical arrangements. Hello, Blue Roses (named for a line in Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie) aims for the English folk rock of the 1960s and falls short with melodies that are languidly pedestrian and laced with fipple flutes. Standout "Shadow Falls" notably has little in common with the rest of the album. Containing more in common with Prefab Sprout than Bridget St. John in its use of synthesizers, the tender song reaches a level of pop dreaminess the rest of the album never attains.

Posted Sunday, January 27, 2008

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/music/hello.blue.roses/the.portrait.is.finished