Flowers - Everybody’s Dying To Meet You
8/10
Legend (or rather the band’s publicity) has it that Flowers began when guitarist Sam Ayres placed an advert stating he wanted to make pop songs like “early Madonna through a broken tape machine" which led him to vocalist Rachel Kennedy. Not sure about that but, along with drummer Jordan Hocley, they make a decent noise on this, their second album.
Pull My Arm and Ego Loss are pretty, catchy pop, the former with an almost 2Tone bounce, the latter with Mary Chain fuzz. Talking of JAMC, Bitter Pill is cousin to April Skies. All At Once could be My Bloody Valentine with audible vocals. With Intrusive Thoughts, All About Eve come to mind. Unusually, they save the highlights to last, with the closing duo of My Only Friend and Bathroom Sink. The former recalls House of Love and the latter has something of the Velvet Ubderground about it.
Flowers admit to being influenced by shoegaze and C86, which is clearly evident. Rachel’s vox may be a little high for some but I like ’em. At times, it seems that they’ve been listening to Loveless rather too often but there are hints of their own identity. With a little more individuality, they’ll be contenders. As it is, this is bordering on being quite lovely.
8/10
