After releasing a couple of appetizer singles (the lighthearted, guitar-filled “Strange Place” and melancholy indie-ballad “What The Hell”) in 2022, Blue of Colors will finally be serving up the main course on February 24 in the form of a glowing LP, appropriately titled “Long Time Coming.” Considering it’s been 10 years since Blue of Colors debut album, it has most certainly been a long time coming for lead singer and songwriter Steve Soboslai, who brought the album over the finish line while juggling pandemic-style recording while prepping for the birth of his first child. With pain-staking precision, Soboslai not only crafted the music but put together the perfect dream team to lend their support and take the project to the next level.
Laurel Wain and Katie Morrow from Pittsburgh-based indie band String Machine, as well as Paul Menotiades (The Composure, Punchline) and John Browne contributed instrumentation and backing vocals to numerous tracks. Charlie Brand of synth-pop powerhouse Miniature Tigers - whose career has since been launched into space via his engineering work on the past two Weezer albums - produced and oversaw the majority of the album.
Steve bluntly explains the ethos the team brought to life:
“Like life, my music has a bittersweet feel. Many of the songs are in a minor key, but it’s hard to get the singer-songwriter in me to be overly serious. This push and pull presents itself in the form of Blue of Colors. It’s music for when you feel so alive, but realize you’re gonna die one day.”
This energy is felt in full on “Changing of the Season,” the lead track on “Long Time Coming.” An upbeat, bouncy garage-rock ditty, the song maintains a happy essence that somehow carries with it a tiny sliver of melancholy. In a sense it’s a chaser that helps an already great song go down that much more smoothly, but perhaps it’s also that comically morbid realization Steve mentioned above. Either way the result is thoroughly enjoyable, and the rest of the album only serves to hammer home the fact that Blue of Colors is a force to be reckoned with in the indie-rock scene.
Blue of Colors work serves as a reflection on the chapters of life and their progression and flow into one another. For Soboslai himself, a former Nashville songwriter, this awakening was a return to finding inspiration in Blue of Colors and close collaboration with friends.
Soboslai has leaned heavily into that creative drive with Charlie Brand of synth pop powerhouse Miniature Tigers – the pair bringing the versatility of his sound to light in stunning fashion with multiple singles now in-tow. To crown the string of newly penned tracks, Blue of Colors tapped close friends and collaborators from the Pittsburgh indie group String Machine to channel the enchanting nostalgia of Blue of Colors.
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