The Portrait Is Finished and I Have Failed to Capture Your Beauty

We Say...

Review by Matthew Fritch

There’s enough circumstantial evidence to charge Hello, Blue Roses — a collaboration between Destroyer’s Dan Bejar and girlfriend Sydney Vermont — with impersonating John and Yoko. Vermont is a visual artist and idiosyncratic vocalist, while Bejar (also a member of the New Pornographers) plays the role of the woolly, established singer/songwriter. The Vancouver-based duo claims to write songs in various states of domestic bliss, with Vermont generating melodies during bath time and Bejar arranging the music and adding most of the instrumentation.

Listen to any song on debut album The Portrait Is Finished, however, and it’s immediately clear that Vermont is no Ono (nor is Bejar, for that matter, Lennon): Her voice lilts and dips melodiously with the loopy flair of Kate Bush, and there’s not a moment of screeching or atonality. Placed front and center in the mix, Vermont’s controlled vibrato is more coffeehouse than art house, and Bejar mainly strums a sympathetic acoustic guitar while occasionally joining in on vocals. There’s a definite whiff of faerie-dusted medieval folk in the air — not an unexpected direction from the caftan-wearing Bejar or the flute-playing Vermont — but Hello, Blue Roses is not nearly as daffy as the Joanna Newsom/Devendra Banhart crowd, even if Vermont’s enunciation is so formless and vowel-heavy that she sometimes seems to be singing in Gaelic.

Destroyer fans will likely gravitate toward the pop-oriented songs in which Bejar and Vermont sing together or in tandem: “Shadow Falls,” a cover of Kevin Ayers’ “Hymn” (from the Soft Machine member’s 1973 album Bananamour) and “Coming Through Imposture.” The true appeal of The Portrait Is Finished, however, is its relaxed pace and uncomplicated themes — a far cry from Bejar’s agitated worldview and cryptic wordplay with Destroyer. “So many confused words,” the pair sings on “Hymn,” slowly stretching the lyrics over a mountain range of notes. Whether listened to while cuddling, chilling out or coming down, the tonic sounds of Hello, Blue Roses are as sublime as green tea and a Joni Mitchell record.