While My Father Sleeps
, the full-length debut by
Oh, Rose
, serves the double purpose of introducing a fiery indie rock combo and delivering the poignant backstory of its leader and namesake
Olivia Rose Huebner
. The Olympia-based quartet formed in 2014, establishing themselves around the Pacific Northwest with a well-received EP and subsequent mini-album before landing a deal with
Park the Van Records
in hopes of finding a wider audience. As a songwriter,
Huebner
has flashed shades of personal catharsis since the beginning, weaving themes of struggle, defiance, and renewal into elastic lo-fi missives full of explosive peaks and valleys. She and the band were already well into the songwriting process for this album when in early 2017, her mother, Wanda Lee Stephenson, passed away. A writer and storyteller in North Carolina, Stephenson had been devoted to her own lifelong work in the form of a book called While My Father Sleeps. In tribute to her mother's unfinished book,
adopted the title for her band's debut and channeled her grief and anger into a wild dynamo of sound and sentiment. To a chugging soundtrack of mid-'90s indie rock, she confronts her fury head-on in opener "25 Alive," building up her dulcet vocals into a thrilling crescendo of anguish and power. The cool hues and buzzing synths of "I Believe" ride a propulsive groove while "Phoenix" uses its downbeat front half and frenetic conclusion to explore the stages of emotional rebirth. Throughout the album, drummer
Liam Hindahl
and bassist
Kevin Christopher
create a nimble but mighty rhythm battery while keyboardist
Sarah Redden
throws in some interesting textural counterpoint to
's guitar work, but ultimately it's the singer's wildly undulating voice that remains the central focus here. Shifting from sweet and airy to downright feral,
's instrument is an impressive one and even if she sometimes errs on too much repetition or indistinct mumbles, there is a unique power to both her delivery and the way she presents her songs. Finding inspiration in family and in friendship,
is as much a sonic statement as it is an emotional one. ~ Timothy Monger