Album Notes

Following the successful reception to Hello Morning’s debut EP, the band spent the year playing shows around the northwest with international touring bands such as Two Door Cinema Club and Wang Chung, and local favorites like Climber, Crosstide, and Mnemonic.


When Hello Morning found it was time to start recording their second CD, they found the songs they’d written shared some emotional states and narrative threads - love, trust, commitment, and communication between friends and lovers, both real and imagined. These songs culminated in “A Fiction” a diverse collection of modern rock explorations, the recording of which was entirely funded by Hello Morning’s loyal fan base. The band spread the word about their fan-funding campaign and their fans heeded the call, exceeding their goal with time to spare. In turn, the band found they could then record an entire album’s worth of songs, so they booked extra studio time, recording again at Secret Society with mixing from Jeff Stuart Saltzman (Death Cab For Cutie, Menomena, Decemberists) and Kyle Lockwood (Climber), who also makes a guest appearance playing strings.


Musically, Hello Morning both polished and expanded their approach, retaining their majestic, uplifting sound on “The Fear”, a postmodern mid-tempo anthem with a deep pocket and “A Good Year”, an minor key whirlwind which calls to mind Death Cab and Interpol. The striking new sound of the band becomes more evident on “Letters”, which seamlessly merges a double-time drum machine, a live dub drum beat, and haunting guitars that sound like icicles and arctic wind. All the while, Henry Curl’s potent timbre sings a Neil Young-ian melody of unsent letters and unrealized dreams. “All I Knew”, one of the last songs to be written, sprang to life one magical night and stands as the album’s emotional highlight, going from a widescreen velvety throb to a psychedelic freak out, in the course of seven electric minutes.