HEY OCEAN! GIVES IT ANOTHER GO
After a lengthy hiatus, Vancouver trio has reformed to release its fourth full-length album
Hey Ocean! drifted apart in 2014. Ashleigh Ball (vocals/flute), David Beckingham (vocals/guitars) and David Vertesi (vocals/bass) had a decade together touring, recording and releasing three full-length albums and four EPs.
With the exception of performing at the yearly #SingItFwd to raise awareness about the importance of youth musical education and funds for the ongoing work of the St. James Music Academy, which supports more than 300 children in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, the band seemed to be on permanent hiatus.
That is, until an announcement last July on the group’s Facebook page teased an upcoming fourth album, with the track Sleepwalker streaming on SoundCloud. This week, the independently released The Hurt of Happiness arrives.
“When we called it (the hiatus), we had sat down to start writing the next record and there just wasn’t the well to draw upon, we had all really grown tired of the project,” Beckingham says. “It was like going to a job you didn’t want to be at. Thankfully, Vertesi had the strength to be the one to go, ‘I’m out, you two go ahead if you want,’ and we all agreed to break up.”
Ball said: “Sitting there in Nuba off Main, I realized my role as the peacemaker totally failed and it was ending and total panic ensued. We were faking it and it wasn’t fun anymore.”
The members may have hit an impasse collectively, but individually, they remained some of the local scene’s most active artists.
Vertesi, co-founder of #SingItFwd, released his second solo album, Sad Dad Cruise Ship, and co-founded the Vancouver Mural Fest. Beckingham dropped the well-received Just When the Light album. Ball put out her solo debut, Gold in You, and worked in Vancouver’s film and TV industry. She grimaces at the mention she may have as many fans for voicing Applejack and Rainbow Dash in the animated kids’ series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic as for her singing.
“As much as the break was really hard, we rekindled the relationships without the stress,” said Ball. “Until it came back to wanting to work together again.”
Experience and emotions form the core of The Hurt of Happiness’ nine tracks. From the bouncy opener Amsterdam, with its reflection on love in a specific time and place, to the appropriately titled closing ballad To The Sea, the album is the most lush thing the trio has recorded. Lyrical depth and melodic maturity are everywhere. This is a very committed project.
“We had complete control and did things the way we wanted all through the recording process,” said Beckingham. “It’s fully independent, because we learned from our record deal with Universal and management company experience that we could get further working that way.”
To underline how the group’s major label experience went, Ball says the 2013 Juno Awards show was a pretty good indicator.
“There we were in Regina, our first Junos, nominated in the Breakout Group of the Year category and on the red carpet looking good and feeling great and our publicist just leaves us because Carly Rae Jepsen shows up and ‘she’s the priority,’” Ball said. “So we are left to walk the carpet alone and no one had anything to ask us and it was pretty tragic.”
Working with a new indie manager and a dedicated crew, Hey Ocean! says gearing up for the tour cycle for The Hurt of Happiness and working the singles to radio feels like turning back the clock to earlier, happier, times.
The band deserves to be coming at it with confidence.
They have experience to fall back on and know they made a really good record.
They have also done it their way, with collaborations and connections. The video for the new single Amsterdam uses footage filmed by Ball’s boyfriend Dustin on his iPhone and an Olympus camera that was edited together by band friend Joe Klymkiw with animations from Mario Forero. The video looks like a big-budget work. It wasn’t. Rather, it’s inspired.
“It’s like we’re back to the beginning again,” said Ball. “We have a super-gung-ho new manager who really loves the band and wants to do things for us. Things are working the way we want them to be working.”
Hey Ocean! heads down the West Coast into the U.S. for six dates in April, plays Quebec City in July and is booked for the inaugural Skookum fest in Vancouver’s Stanley Park in September. More tour dates are coming as the word gets out that the band is back.
As long as it’s happy rather than hurting, Hey Ocean! has returned.