"You should tip her."

SPIN.com Artist of the Day

Hello, Blue Roses

Who? The love child of two multi-talented, multi-tasking eclectics, Hello, Blue Roses pairs visual artist/vocalist/flautist Sydney Vermont with her scraggly-haired sweetheart, artsy singer/songwriter Dan Bejar (Destroyer, New Pornographers, Swan Lake), to make up this charming duo. Their intimacy beget a distinctive and engrossing debut album, complete with the awww-inspiring title, The Portrait Is Finished And I Have Failed to Capture Your Beauty... due Jan. 22 via the Locust label.

What's the Deal? Like a Sonny & Cher for the hippest sectors of the Great White North, these Vancouverites are anything but frigid, delivering 14 warm embers of by-the-fire folk fitted for the lovelorn literati. Written by Vermont and arranged by Bejar, the set sounds pristine and nearly regal -- Vermont's chandelier-shaking falsetto ever-climbing as on the autonomous lead track "Hello Blue Roses" and Bejar's compositional majesty unleashing glimmering galactic synths on "Shadow Falls" or his signature '70s-gone-bare wailing riffs riding acoustic strums during "Coming Through Imposture." Elsewhere, the almost-medieval "Come Darkness" conjures frills and flowing dresses in a flute-filled reverie while their cover of Kevin Ayers' "Hymn" demonstrates a couple's premonition in a winding acoustic duet, each idiosyncratic voice rising, falling, and breaking in harmony.

Fun Fact: "My art usually comes out of books of fiction, and tends towards women," Vermont tells SPIN.com. In fact, the band takes its name from the Tennessee Williams play, The Glass Menagerie, in which the tragic female lead Laura explains her affliction as pluerosis, misunderstood by her great love Jim as "Blue Roses." JOSEPH COSCARELLI

Now Hear This
Hello, Blue Roses - "Shadows Fall" DOWNLOAD MP3

On the Web:
Hello, Blue Roses at MySpace

via SPIN.com