The Children's Hour Announce First Album In 20 Years; 'Going Home' Set For February Release

Twenty plus years ago, The Children's Hour (Josephine Foster, Andy Bar, David Pajo), fresh from a cross-country tour supporting Zwan in arenas across North America, made a final stop in Shelbyville, Kentucky.

Gathering in the studio of Paul Oldham, they would lay down an album's worth of material they had been refining on the road, recording over the course of a single day. They each went their separate ways, unsure of when they would reconvene again to share the new record. As it turned out, that future date was just a lot further down the road than they had anticipated. And when it came, the recordings themselves seemed to have been lost.

To all of our good fortunes today, Paul Oldham at last came across the tapes buried in his archives. And so today, The Children's Hour are pleased to announce Going Home, this unlikely and long journeyed sophomore album, now set to arrive February 23 via Drag City imprint Sea Note. In conjunction, they have shared the album's lead single, “Bright Lights,” and three album release celebrations, in Louisville, Chicago and Nashville [details below]. Pre-order/save Going Home here.

Discussing the first single, Josephine offers, “'Bright Lights' to me is an imagining of the final hours of one's life, in the arms of our beloved, under the sky, just marveling at the heavens, and fearlessly staring into the sun, as we had never dared, fully merging with the light that will soon absorb us.”

The Children's Hour origins occurred some time around the turn of the millennium in Chicago, when opera school dropout Josephine Foster and  Andy Bar, a student at the Art Institute of Chicago, collaborated briefly in a rock trio called Golden Egg. When that disbanded, they carried on and formed a duo they named The Children's Hour after a Longfellow poem. In short time they released an EP, garnering both local acclaim, and the attention of legendary UK DJ, John Peel, who featured a track on his influential BBC Radio One show. 

Around the time of the release of their debut full-length, SOS JFK in 2003, The Children's Hour were invited on the road to open for Zwan (the supergroup which included David Pajo on guitar). The duo's sparse, weaving guitar lines, and gentle melodies, warranted a back beat in the massive rooms they suddenly found themselves in. So Pajo filled in on drums, performing double duty with both groups every night. The musical connection between the three was immediate, and so it was that when the tour ended, they would quickly head to Kentucky to capture that energy. Luckily for us all, they did.

Going Home shows the evolution of The Children's Hour, infusing elements of psychedelia and The Velvets, while the focus remains on Josephine's soulful voice, and vivid lyricism. The intricate guitar arrangements of Andy Bar, ornamented by Josephine's melodic lead guitar lines, are both exalted by David's ecstatic percussion and bass lines. Recorded originally by Paul Oldham, the album was mixed and mastered at Nashville's Bomb Shelter studios.

Photo Credit: Dan Osborn

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