The Portrait Is Finished...

Hello, Blue Roses
The Portrait Is Finished...
locust 106
CD / 180 gram LP
2008-01-22

The sweetheart duo of Dan Bejar (Destroyer, Swan Lake, New Pornographers) & Sydney Vermont (visual artist, former Toronto Children’s Choir kid singer) have tied the knot around an infectious readymade classic with their 14 track self titled debut. The Portait Is Finished folds the last few decades of pop music together, drawing on everything from an unabashed love of 80s AOR (Prefab Sprout & Kate Bush) to the cheery mysticism of young Scotland ( Orange Juice & Felt) to prime Aquarian age femme folk of the 60s & 70s (Bridget St. John, et. al.).

The Portait Is Finished was written and recorded over a period when Dan & Sydney took time out of regular life to hang out together, write and read and think about life differently...and be in Spain. From Málaga, Spain’s balmy Mediterranean Winter - where the songs first started getting demoed - to the rainy Vancouver climes where the album was recorded at Bejar fave JC/DC studios, the 14 songs - all penned by Sydney (except Kevin Ayer’s “Hymn”) and arranged by Dan, maintain the unencumbered, free and easy spirit in which they first took root resulting in a sparsely populated, timeless pop sound.

(right click and save for larger pics and album cover)

On Cd and 180 Gram vinyl

some praise:

"Portrait bears the marks of a perfect collaboration, one in which two very strong (and very different) personal aesthetics merge seamlessly together into one unified vision.

- Dusted Magazine

"If dream-like celestial pop rings your fancy, you will swoon for Hello, Blue Roses, the side project of Dan Bejar (Destroyer, New Pornographers) and his main squeeze, visual artist Sydney Vermont. The band was developed in Vancouver in 2005, and over the past two years, their labor of love has blossomed to fruition" - Filter Magazine