Not, you may have guessed by now, a gentle folk duo singing whimsical songs about flowers and honeydew, nope – The Rose Petals are a little more rock orientated with guitars sent to maximum jangle. ‘Military Man‘ is the second single from the band’s upcoming album ‘American Grenadine‘ due on April 23rd. It’s a song looking back to the Eisenhower era, and reflecting that the times were no more perfect than today.
The Rose Petals was formed by Peter Donovan and Elijah Ocean, who first met in 2008 when Donovan moved from L.A. to Portland, Maine, where Ocean was living at the time. The pair bonded over their shared love of Bob Dylan and The Beatles, and they quickly set to work writing songs and emulating their shared role models of Lennon and McCartney, with Donovan on lyrics and Ocean on music. And genre fans you’ll be pleased to know that this Byrdsian sound is called, by The Rose Petals, post-Americana. By which they mean “uniquely modern American music infused with tinges of the past.” We’ll stick to filing under the snappy NWOBIB – New Wave Of Byrds Influenced Bands.
Photo: Dan Destiny