On their debut full-length While My Father Sleeps, Olivia Rose, frontperson for the Olympia, WA-based band Oh, Rose, tackles the devastating loss of her mother, who passed away in January 2017. She explains via a press release:
“While My Father Sleeps is the title of the book my mother wrote throughout her life. It involved her relationship with my grandfather, the way she could communicate with him through the poetry of Carl Sandburg and the writings of Truman Capote. Her storytelling always inspired me to tell my own through music. The album title and artwork serves as a bookend, the songs written between two moments. The front cover shows my mother reading to my brother and me outside the North Asheville library in the summer of 1995, the back is her headstone.”
“Though I didn’t write these songs in a state of grief, I came to know this album while I was grieving. When my mother died, I learned a new language, the language of death. At the same time, I was continuing to build strength and love within my community; my story isn’t uncommon. I hope my music finds a home with those who speak these same languages.”
The accompanying music video, directed and edited by the band themselves, finds Rose and her bandmates at Westside Lanes in Olympia. In an essay she wrote for Talkhouse, she reflects:
We filmed the first part of this video in my final days of being 25. I felt it was important to document the age in a place I had spent so much time, a bowling alley in West Olympia. We were the first non-cover band they ever booked. We were there the first night they hosted karaoke. We went every Wednesday. We called it church.
Watch the clip below. You can catch Oh, Rose opening for Phantogram on December 10th at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland.
