Vancouver's Art Rock Band, Sunday Morning, Release Self-Titled Debut Record Today

Vancouver's indie art rock band, Sunday Morning, fuses Southern musical influences with 1970's New York and Berlin. Formed by writer/artist Bruce Wilson (vocals) and Stephen Hamm (keyboards, piano), who played together in the 90s in the thunderous Tankhog, Sunday Morning is a departure from their riff laden pasts.

On their self-titled record, which was released today, December 23rd, they enlisted the talents of bassist Coco Culbertson (Bif Naked. The Gay and The Choir Practice); drummer Justin Leigh (Pluto); guitarist Kevin Rose (Tankhog, Coal, The Wongs); cellist Finn Manniche; and vocalists Leah Commons (Bubble 11) and Carmen Bruno (Trailerhawk). Says Wilson, "We basically went after our dream band of Vancouver musicians and got exactly that!"

For those in Vancouver, to celebrate the release of the record, the band will host a special multi-tiered hometown performance on January 21st at the historic performing arts theater, The Cultch (1895 Venables St). The show will feature visuals by acclaimed Vancouver photographer and filmmaker R.d Cane. This is a rare live show by the band. Over the past three years, Sunday Morning has only played three shows while writing their debut album.

Drawing upon from both his own experiences and his fictional ones growing up in Florida and living in New York, Wilson began writing the lyrics for "Sunday Morning" when he started writing his novel while living in a tiny hotel room in Vancouver. He asked Hamm if he wanted to collaborate on a couple songs and that mushroomed into several songs they were doing rough demos of in his little studio.

The album was recorded, mixed, and mastered over an eighteen month period with John Raham (Frayze Ford, The Be Good Tanya's, The Belle Game) and engineer Erik Neilson at Afterlife Studio in Vancouver. Overdubs and mixing was done with Vancouver indie juggernaut Felix Fung (Spectres, Girlfriends and Boyfriends, Wishkicker) at Little Red Sounds Studio.

An album stream for "Sunday Morning" premiered on "Label Obscura" today.

"Come the Rain" acts an opening soliloquy for the album. Described by Wilson as "Almost a prayer for salvation put into terms of a simple love song waltz", he began thinking of the lyrics when he moved back to Vancouver in 2010 after ending a relationship in Western Massachusetts. He says, "It rains a lot in Vancouver and I've learned I can either embrace it or be miserable ten months out of the year. And miserable is a drag."

The first single from "Sunday Morning", the blistering "Sick In The City", is about being dope sick in New York; the nihilism and isolation that heroin addiction embraces, and the self-centered narcissism and misanthropy that accompanies drug withdrawal. The desperation to just feel alive.

To compliment the release of "Sunday Morning", Wilson worked with R.d Cane to create videos for "Come The Rain", "1986" and "Sick In The City". Cane, who started in the film industry in 1974 and has shot thousands of movies, commercials, and music videos in North America and Japan, was Wilson's obvious choice for photographs and videos. "The emotional content of all these pieces was drawn from personal trauma so I needed to work with someone I felt completely comfortable with. His direction was unobtrusive and he captured the raw essence of the content", he says.

Sunday Morning can be a time of quiet streets and peaceful reflection, or coming to in a stranger's bed trying piece together fragmented images from the night before. Feeling the weight of living in reflection on events impossible to change or recreate. It is a journey that travels thousands of miles, and starts here. On Sunday Morning.

For more on Sunday Morning, visit www.sundaymorning.band, or follow them on Facebook: www.facebook.com/sundaymorningcomes, Instagram: www.instagram.com/sundaymorningcomes and Twitter: twitter.com/comesundaymorn.

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