Blue Tomorrows

It has been difficult to maintain a calendar lately with everything set adrift. The previous hustle has gone quiet, with what was once communal experience turned inward to the individual. Future Proof, the latest offering from Blue Tomorrows, understands how to take this moment and stretch it out into time and space.

The project found its start in 2018, when guitarist/vocalist Sarah Nienaber (Candace, Web of Sunsets) sought a more solo outlet apart from her regular projects. For the recording of Future Proof, Sarah Rose (Candace) joined in on bass and vocals, with Michaela Gradstein (Plastic Cactus) rounding out the troupe on guitar. With a change in outlook and lineup, gone is the twang that pervaded their debut, Without Color (Moon Glyph, 2019), replaced here by understated vocals alongside darker tones and a breezy drum machine. The instrumentation has expanded in subtle ways, with a vocoder and various field recordings both finding their way into the mix.

Recorded in Portland, Trail, and Vernonia, Oregon, Future Proof offers an unanchored vision tied to solitary space that occasionally looks out into the larger world, hopeful but resigned. It is an album of considering and leaving, of wandering but not aimlessly. The songs within are reflective like a river, not a lake – ambling, drifting, and floating along a strong current, intent on the daydream.

Suddenly, the calendar is out the window, the river is rising, the dream is a space we inhabit.