Music
Press
Despite the title of their long-anticipated debut, it would seem Blue Sky Addicts have no interest in hiding their love. This lush album features sparkling, heart-on-sleeve indie pop anthems that recall those of Montreal popsters Stars. Thing is, the Addicts' ornate, orchestral arrangements are absolutely gorgeous when they work - but they occasionally overwhelm frontman Dan Barkman's understated vocals, making for a frustrating listen. That's a small criticism, however; on the whole, this is a romantic, whimsical debut from a band worth keeping an eye on.
— Jen Zoratti - Uptown Magazine (www.uptownmag.com)
"The album was worth the wait. Produced by Unison Studios' Jack Shapira, Hide Your Love is a beautifully arranged collection of lush pop songs, the kind that manage to be epic without being gradiose. It's also an incredibly unified record - a feat considering some of the songs date as far back as 2003." - Uptown Magazine (September 3, 2009)
Discography
Hide Your Love (Full-length album released Sept. 2009)
Finding Shapes In Clouds EP
(2006 - "Sing A Song" aired on the CBC Radio 3 podcast)
End of the Beginning - single (released 2006 - played on multiple CBC radio shows)
Dreamer's Theme - single (released 2007 - top 20 - Kick FM Winnipeg)
Photos
Bio
Blue Sky Addicts are a five-piece band from Winnipeg, a frozen wasteland in the middle of Canada. But you wouldn't know it from listening to them. They could be from Toronto or Montreal. They could be a new indie Euroband, or a really old band, from the time before everyone's music fit into three-word descriptions. The truth is that three words simply aren't enough for BSA's ongoing progression of noise and rhythm.
It's probably just pop for the most part. Pop and a bit of everything else.
Blue Sky Addicts began as an outlet for part-time friends Dan Barkman and Jordan Wiebe. The early songs were just piano and guitar accompanied by written down attempts at creative pretentiousness or loves lost. The songs did not gain in simplicity what they lacked in charisma, and therefore nothing happened.
The music and the composition became more premeditated in the following years, and ultimately led to a simple but important revelation for Barkman: write what you like. This philosophy generated nearly two albums of music which the band (accompanied now by drummer Landon Hildebrandt, vocalist/cellist Lauren Partridge, and bassist Aaron Schwab) used to generate buzz at local shows and on the radio. An unmixed version of an unfinished song made it into the better half of a local station's top 40 countdown, hurling Blue Sky Addicts in amongst indie icons Feist, The Arcade Fire, and Stars.
CBC Radio 3 soon picked up a couple of songs and included BSA in their 2008 Roadtrip Mixtape Special podcast, claiming Blue Sky Addicts as one of "Canada's best independent bands!" This also caught the attention of Canada's kings of Queen-rock Bend Sinister, who invited BSA to open for them on two tours through.
The notion behind BSA's music is really that no song, no album should be confined to the thoughtless continuity of one guitar tone, one endless chorus, one overbearing effort to produce a record that no one will hate. The mold and pattern of the Pop Song is being reshaped. Blue Sky Addicts are about passion and movement, depth and frailty, power and grace. And pop. Love it or leave it.
2009 will see the release of BSA's highly-anticipated full-length album "Hide Your Love," which is said to be followed closely by two EPs.
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