Pitch / Submit to Art Grove Newsletter!
Ocean Boyfriend's 'May Morning' Is A Reflection On Community
The band's debut album is a meditation on the components that comprise New Orleans' rich sense of community, which is rooted in a deep connection with and sense of place.
By Sophia Heinecke | 11/5/24
The experience of wandering across the waterways, feeling a unity of past and present, and reflecting on the relationships that have taught us so much is the experience of hearing May Morning.
This inaugural album from the New Orleans-based band Ocean Boyfriend guides listeners between efforts to "vanish" one's sorrows yet acknowledge great loss. The release lets us hear that the work of life is deeply embedded in ideas of community, visioned in acapella arrangements, orchestral tides, and lyrical poetry from Rosemary Wells Minasian, supported by vocalists Claire Givens and Howe Pearson. Though the sonic landscapes and song structures are diverse, the preeminent features of the album are its unity showcased in theme and the exquisite blend the vocalists bring while never losing the unique lilts and emotions of their singular voices. Within every moment, every one of them sings their hearts out. "I feel the energy in the room shift when we all sing," says Howe Pearson, who also contributes to the instrumentals orchestrated by Toren Hardee.
Howe Pearson and Toren Hardee both settled in New Orleans around the same time and became embedded in creative life, singing mountain gospel music. They were both living near Canal Street when Rosemary Wells Minasian moved in just a few blocks away.
"We were having open breakfast three mornings a week at my house," says Hardee, "Rosemary just walked in one morning for breakfast.”
In this easefulness, we encounter a driving idea behind Minasian's creativity: "You are, we are, I am part of an environment," they say. "In our lives and our creative expressions, in the anticipation between what we've set out to do and what happens, it comes out. We are surrounded by water, below sea level, with a big, wide sky. It's a space where your mind and heart help you expand."
"I just want to be in service to their vision," says Hardee of Minasian.
Many albums generated within their slice of the musical ecosystem of New Orleans are live recordings that capture a specific time and feeling of a room. May Morning tributes this but amplifies the ability an album has to bottle a sense of place and time by highlighting interiors and exteriors –– the way your feelings might live differently inside your body and outside when you free them through expression.
Helping listeners picture the interiors and exteriors that inspire the songwriting is done in multiple ways, notably in different aspects of the production championed by Toren Hardee. Toren mentions Howe took a voice memo while down at "The End of the World," a levee along the canal that leads to the Mississippi River in New Orleans' Bywater neighborhood, which appears on the track "Selene.". When the lyrics mention going down to the end of the world, the magic of this image is multiplied when we remember that this is a real place. We are hearing the truth of Minasian's lyrical memory and the truth captured on the iPhone field recording –– a fragment of reality. On "Selene," the voices of Givens, Minasian, and Pearson break apart and come back together, making space for strings and piano to be balanced and "gracefully pulled in with the tide." Sometimes, the voices overtake everything, letting us as listeners float in resonant harmony. This ebb and flow set the tone for the album's musicality.
The most non-traditional and the longest, "Canal" is immersive in its build. The instrumental opening includes cello, then violin, patient and wistful before angelic three-part harmony proclaims, "I'm talking to you." The orchestral instruments have become soloists while tandem vocal acts as a rich orchestra leading into the diegetic soundscape from "The End of the World".
Hardee describes some of his more exploratory moments of world-building as “sound paintings” done in his home studio, noting that "Canal" became like a composite of New Orleans: the chime tree in City Park, the crickets, the frogs, Steamboat Natchez and Lake Pontchartrain. "It's water-oriented," he notes in regard to both the city and album.
Every song on May Morning is steeped in metaphor, centering communications as passageways in and out of another consciousness and toward better community life. In “Canal, repetition of the line "when I reach land I'll understand" hammers home a beautiful wisdom about communication in general: That perhaps perspective offered by distance and time helps us decode the meaning of where we are and where others are in relation. "Canal" is the only song where we fade in and out of the track, a choice made to exhibit that "it is something eternal. You are just tuning into one little piece of it," Hardee notes.
Another hallmark of May Morning is its holistic reflection back and forth between what has passed and what is current, which crystallizes in a dialogue between solo leading vocal and choral singing. Each voice is technically accomplished in pitch and control and so alive in unique emotion. You can almost envision facial expressions when you listen, perhaps due to years of theater experience under the belts of Givens and Pearson.
"This album connects with what happened when I first heard the demos, honoring that feeling. The demo for "Garden"," Howe swoons, "I really felt was perfect. Even getting to sing on the track, it will never be as good as when Rosemary sings it themselves, but the cello in that recording is a whole new voice, only adding to the intention from that first note. That is a testament to Toren."
To listen to the voice of Rosemary Wells Minasian is to be captivated by feeling and lyrical poetry that imbues their writing process. "Garden" gives us insight into their powerful belt –– a signature and astonishing part of their live shows. The emotional intensity is not muddled in the recorded version of "Garden", supported by tender acoustic guitar on the lead-in, sliding moans of cello, and spirals of flute closing the final refrain.
There is also something cheeky on "PFB" and "Waste Ur Time," which Claire Givens identifies as "Something I don't do in my other musical ventures, this sense of humor. The humor, seriousness, and joy that this music forces us all as singers to tap into. It is so out of the norm for choral music."
Discovering that Givens, Pearson, and Minasian forged a deep relationship and blend across many gigs as a Roches cover band adds even more glory to May Morning. It is the outcome of a loving and lengthy relationship performing together. This extends to Hardee, who, alongside Rosemary, is also a member of the band Wavering and is abundantly grateful for "all the freedom and leeway they gave”.
The process of recording was truly collaborative with contributions spilling over and out of assigned roles of vocalist, producer, and musician. The trust that permeates across the tracks arrives in both a personal and professional sense. Individually and collectively, the songs have a focus, perhaps because "most came out in one swoop", Rosemary says. "A song reveals itself to me, then three, five, six hours later, it's recorded, populated with what has stayed with me from the environment. Then, teaching the harmonies is a shared experience, as is how the songs are received by audiences in such a heartfelt way."
The final track of the album, "Waste Ur Time," features grounding piano chords under a more free-form vocal section and almost deranged haha-ing. Again, in this moment we hear voices act more as an instrument, exerting power through precision that is a considerable contrast to moments of scooping up to notes and legato stretch across phrases. The song's winding lyrics let us feel the work of weighing the options, of pacing back to find the path forward.
"I love that the piano sounds kind of saloon-y. You can really hear the room," Toren says.
"What drew me to these songs was that they connected all of these dots in my life, making me feel these particular details about New Orleans, making the scope so huge. Shaping Rosemary's talents was bolstered by a communion between the storied creative world of New Orleans and an eager nature to see what is possible”, says Howe.
"We open up first to nature," Rosemary Wells Minasian affirms, "following cycles and subtle changes in light. Songs come through mysterious and timeless. The environment of New Orleans is very spiritual to me."
Listeners and collaborators want to return again and again to the dialogue between individual experience and environment cultivated by May Morning. Galvanizing and meditative, Claire Givens sees it as a call to "laugh at the grandiose-ness" of this life, a call to join into a life connected to all other lives as the rivers and estuaries of New Orleans connect to the ocean. Feeling possibility and giving to it is the process of writing for Minasian, yet nothing is ever done in their mind until others have touched it. Rosemary calls it "the reality that helped me find a connection to spirituality again. The songs reveal how I am unconsciously and consciously relating to the environment. If that reaches people, it completes the cycle."
About the Author:
Sophia Valera Heinecke is a writer who grew up in Central Virginia and lives in New York City. Sophia's work focuses on discovering what others believe and what communities want to know, finding systems that can help break down complex and changing processes and make them more accessible and intentional. Sophia believes that artists hold a critical skill set that will become key to the survival of human communities as our uncertain future arrives.
