Blue Roses - Blue Roses

This week here at Breaking More Waves towers we are going excitably hype crazy. Yesterday we wrote about the best gig we have been to so far this year. Today we feature an album that come year end can almost guarantee itself a place in our Top 10 Albums of the Year list.

Blue Roses self titled debut is the work of one Laura Groves from Shipley, Bradford. It is a cliché to say that an artist shows maturity beyond their years, and in recent times many talented female singers from Laura Marling to Adele have been tagged in this way. It is likely that the music of Blue Roses will also receive such seals of approval, but if it does it will be for a very different type of maturity. Vocally Laura Groves certainly doesn’t sound particularly seasoned. Startling and wonderful yes, but her high reaching voice is more reminiscent of a choir girl than some ageing troubadour. Instead the maturity from Blue Roses emanates from the ethereal classicism of her beautiful music.

The songs of Blue Roses are not instant. They will never light up the pop charts or bother the mainstream. They are delicate and subtle pieces to immerse yourself in. Layered but never over saturated with soft coloured experimentation, they are elegant and involving.

Recorded in living rooms, bedrooms and bathrooms of various houses, the album is formed from the basis of complex piano works more reminiscent of Schubert or Debussy, and folkish guitar pieces that dance in the moonlight with Kate Bush and Joni Mitchell. Cover Your Tracks is one such song, a lovely lullaby which features xylophone, a repeated plucked acoustic guitar refrain and soothing vocals from a choir and Fyfe Dangerfield from the Guillemots. Single Doubtful Comforts is a haunting minimal ghost waltz with the distant crackle of old vinyl present. Then there’s Can’t Sleep where Laura sings of the unreachable expectations of love, “Beyond this ceiling’s heaven, is that where we’re aspiring?” she questions. Every song on the album has the same degree of perfectly measured morning mist tranquillity without ever being ‘coffee table music.’

If catchy verse chorus verse pop songs are your only thing, then the music of Blue Roses will not meet your taste. However if you are prepared to listen to something that is a little more ambitious, dreamlike and unique then Blue Roses is an album that you will slowly begin to treasure.

Here is a simple acoustic version of the song I Am Leaving from the album, brought to you by the wonderful bandstand busking people. The album will be released next Monday, 27th April.