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by Megan Trihey<\/b><\/p>\n
Patrick Kearns arrived out of breath five minutes before 9:30, a guitar case in one hand and his girlfriend\u2019s hand entwined with his other. He just finished playing an acoustic set down the street at Backspace. Ten minutes later, Kearns and the rest of Blue Skies for Black Hearts were on the red-lit stage and playing with no introduction.<\/p>\n
The band was playing at Dante\u2019s, a popular Portland, Oregon venue whose interior design reflects its name. The only lights in the dark brick building came from the stage or small candles flickering on the black tabletops. Though the Underworld-esq adornment remained throughout the show, as soon as Blue Skies for Black Hearts begun playing their upbeat classic pop rhythms, it was easy to forget I was in hell.<\/p>\n
The music is charming. It\u2019s clearly influenced by everyone\u2019s favorite oldies, a nice contrast to the Emo music that, based on the name of the band, I thought I was going to encounter. But the band does what its name claims and incorporates a duality \u2013 the feel-good feeling you get when listening to Blue Skies for Black Hearts and the somewhat gloomy lyrics that are utterly relatable.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something to be said about saying things in a way that\u2019s easier for people to take but also connects with them,\u201d said lead guitarist Michael Lewis.<\/p>\n
The band attributes its easy-going melodies to its dark sense of humor.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo many people do this Emo thing and it\u2019s like, \u2018poor me, and blah, blah, blah,\u2019\u201d said Kearns. \u201cI\u2019m depressed all the time anyway, so it\u2019s kind of like, that\u2019s the dark sense of humor thing, I like to laugh at it and have fun with it and I think that\u2019s the beauty with a lot of the 60\u2019s music that people didn\u2019t get. It wasn\u2019t all happy hippy yay, yay, yay back then either, but they would take stuff that was sort of sad and turn it around put a happy melody under it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kearns, Lewis, bassist Kelly Simmons, and drummer Paul Noel seem to enjoy putting on a show almost as much as the audience loves being the audience. The guys were smiling, laughing, and appeared to exchange inside jokes with mere glances throughout the set, but their energy climaxed during \u201cSiouxsie Please Come Home.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tune is about a guy writing to his soldier girl, woefully waiting for her to come home from war.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted a twist of the sexes,\u201d said Kearns, who wrote the song. \u201cBack in the 60\u2019s when people would write these songs, or this type of song, it was always like \u2018soldier boy,\u2019 or this kind of thing so I wanted the soldier to be the girl \u2026 it\u2019s something that couldn\u2019t have happened back then and so I wanted to twist it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The song is also indicative of the turbulent times in which we live.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think in the last decade it\u2019s a little difficult to separate the reality of now and history,\u201d said Lewis. \u201cIt\u2019s a recognition of the times we live in.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s more personal though,\u201d added Simmons, \u201cbecause it\u2019s between the person writing the letter and the person receiving the letter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kearns admits more was at play when he wrote the song. His girlfriend, Susan, was away from home on a trip, and he wanted her to come home. In addition to his loneliness, he explained he had a strange daydream in which Burt Baccarat was dating Jessica Lynch, the first POW rescued during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had this weird thing in my head,\u201d said Kearns. \u201cIf he [Baccarat] was dating Jessica Lynch, what kind of song would he write? So I kind of tried to write that song.\u201d<\/p>\n
The collection of thoughts tumbled into \u201cSiouxsie Please Come Home,\u201d which appeared to be an audience favorite and the most-listened to song on the band\u2019s Myspace page. But that\u2019s how Kearns says most of the songs are composed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe get pretty interested, I think, in relationships of people in books as well as people we know and that sort of talking and books that we\u2019re reading now, just sort of what\u2019s going on, it starts to filter into the songs in weird ways,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Blue Skies For Black Hearts\u2019 latest album, Serenades and Hand Grenades, can be purchased on iTunes.<\/p>\n
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