Flowers For Your Heart

My project HUE released our sophomore album, Flowers For Your Heart on May 31st.  It features James Meger on bass, Justin Devries on drums and guest vocalist Laura Swankey (Toronto).

Flowers for Your Heart tackles two artistic objectives: firstly, how to create music that is both abstract and accessible; and secondly, how to lead a band with harp in a way does not compromise sensitivity with it’s boldness, or aesthetic beauty with it’s curiosity.

I find this quote from literary critic Mark Abley quite poignant in expressing how I feel about the relationship between tradition and innovation in the arts: “ we have focused so hard on the desire to make our work perpetually new; we have become so suspicious of stale rhetoric; and we have wanted so much to disconnect ourselves from the styles and tropes of the past, that we’ve ended up isolating ourselves from the public” (Prairie Fire, vol. 28, no. 3, 2007). With sentiment in mind, this album uses influence from rock, pop and indie music in combination with my background in avant-garde and free improv with the intention of creating music that challenges the listener in a way that makes them barely aware they are being taken outside of their boundaries.

Our first record, HUE, felt like a bit of a teenage rebellion against the ‘harp’ archetype – I did my best to avoid anything that could be considered ethereal or classically beautiful.  With this new music, I tried to let that go of that and embrace ‘beautiful’ in ways that still felt authentic and honest. In some ways, I tried to let go of thinking of myself as a ‘harpist’ and the feeling of being chased by this story of what the harp is supposed to be and my rebellion to that.