Flowers For Juno – “Electro Hippies”

Flowers For Juno – “Electro Hippies” – Single Review

Well would you looky here…Flowers For Juno, again!

It feels like I’m picking up right where we left off.  Who doesn’t love Groundhog Day though?

I think you can consider me to be about 97% on board with “Electro Hippies,” and while I profess to be no such kind of mathematician, that seems like a decent score to be proud of, ain’t it?  For the most part, this song is fucking fantastic!  From my perspective, the signature tape-left-melting-out-in-the-sun sound that FFJ loves to shroud itself within is right on the money once again with “Electro Hippies,” and the closer it seems to stick to the script of what we’ve been exposed to with this band so far, the better things go for this particular cut.  The basic ingredients it has at its core in terms of its DNA are solid AF – you’re not going to find me complaining about anything that makes this song a song…err…you know, the stuff you expect to find, verses, guitar, drums, vocals…all those individual pieces are intact, effective, and I love that Flowers For Juno isn’t here to waste your time with anything that’s boring.  Like, they either just outright skipped over having verses or having choruses – I’ll let you choose which, but I’m sure you get the point – having one without the other basically makes it a case of being one OR the other – you follow me?  In any event, I love what I’m hearing in the main part of “Electro Hippies” – and to an extent, that’s all that really matters because everything else involved is fairly inconsequential and/or doesn’t last too long.  The bulk of this track is not just intact – it sounds ridiculously cool, and it has that intangible X-factor allure that has made Flowers For Juno great to listen to this year.  The mid-song breakdown is of minor concern…it’s an awkward fit if I’m being completely real with ya, and feels a bit like an unforced error.  The consequence of not being a verse/chorus/verse type band is that when you try to get inventive and switch things up, sometimes it’ll come out brilliantly natural, and other times you’ll have moments like you have here in “Electro Hippies” where it feels more like doing something for the sake of doing something, and lacking that decisive intention we wanna hear in the music we’re listening to.  To me, it felt like the fading out killed the momentum this track had going for it, the samples after were a scattered mix and didn’t really feel like any of them fit, and the snap back into the song was jarring & jagged in a way that almost seemed to be lazy, rather than having the fluidity a part like that would need to have in order to really get the maximum potential out of it.  Aside from an outro that’s probably eighteen out of twenty seconds too long, everything else in between pushing play and the end of this tune hit the mark for me.  Way more positives happening on this track than negative.

Ultimately, I just feel like Flowers For Juno is exploring a really cool side of sound that not many artists or bands tend to dig too far into.  There will be lots of hits AND misses along the way I’m sure, because that’s basically the nature of the game when you’re pushing yourself into expressive and experimental artistic terrain, and usually even more the case when the content is coming out at a rapid pace, typically speaking.  Right now, when we’re still far towards the beginning of this band’s career in the grand scheme of things, it’s not so much that the project’s leader Benjó James has been throwing darts wildly and merely getting lucky, so much as artists/bands tend to have the right combination of creativity at the early part of their history.  In that respect, it’s not really too much of a shocker that the content has many similarities to it in terms of how it sounds, but that it all seems to be as artistically inspired as it is as well – all this actually makes perfect sense in the general arc of a music career for most out there.  So…in a sense, sure, you could say that this set of three songs isn’t really much more than a lateral move for Flowers For Juno compared to what we’ve heard so far, but I also think you could just as easily say that what we’re hearing is going a long way to solidify the identity in FFJ’s whole sound overall if this is what it’s going to be for the future ahead.  “My Bloody Kisses – Slow, Deep, And Reverbed” for example, is more of what you probably already love about this band’s sound…I know that’s what it was for me, so don’t get it twisted – I’m not complaining so much as pointing out it’ll work for a while, but there will be a ton more work required in the future to follow in order to avoid being too one-note.  Would I listen to an album or a couple of albums that sound like “My Bloody Kisses – Slow, Deep, And Reverbed?”  You bet I would!  Would I also be looking for FFJ to continue to expand on things from there for the third or fourth album?  Of course!  A couple of things can always be true at the same time.  In terms of texture and tones…sound selection and uniqueness…Flowers For Juno has something special goin’ on, and I’m always interested in hearing where it might go next.  “My Bloody Kisses – Slow, Deep, And Reverbed” might not have been filled with surprises, but it is filled to the brim with the sound I love hearing from Flowers For Juno.  The stellar production in the mix never gets enough credit from me either, so I’m giving it some extra love here right now…FFJ would be no easy task to dial in on the studio boards, but everything I hear on “My Bloody Kisses – Slow, Deep, And Reverbed” is a textbook example of getting it done right, and the vast majority of what you’ll hear this band put out there is very close to this quality.

While I am always more of the exception than the rule in terms of my own personal taste and what I like to listen to, I think “Comatoast” was probably my favorite this time around.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect most folks to agree with me on this choice…it’s very much like…hmm…like you didn’t notice your record player got bumped off track and it’s been stuck playing this one stretch of bars hypnotically for hours before you realized it…but c’mon, that can be a good thing, can’t it?  Of all the tracks featured on this single, there’s definitely an argument to be made that “Comatoast” is actually the most static and least dynamic of the three songs included – and usually, I’d need more fluctuation than what this cut has.  Yet here we are, and somehow FFJ has found the perfect proportion to make this moment really work brilliantly, to the point where I wouldn’t dare change a thing about it.  There’s a beautifully calm & serene melody buried deep into the center of this tune, and Benjó has it cleverly surrounded by distorted vibes and a backward-esque sound to it all…I’m freakin’ here for it.  Hard to choose a favorite this time around though if I’m being honest with ya!  I think “Electro Hippies” was damn near perfect with the exception of a few spots that didn’t fully gel with me…and “My Bloody Kisses – Slow, Deep, And Reverbed” might not have been the most dynamic track either I suppose, but damn did it sound good.  “Comatoast” finds the sweet spot with a more haunting, but still highly sincere melody hidden deep within the mix…and that, at least to me, immediately sounded like the kind of combination in sound that Flowers For Juno should be constantly aiming for.  Was it a mistake to have left “Comatoast” out of the lineup for the album Kairos that just came out at the beginning of this month?  It might very well have been…but you can be the judge & jury on that while I turn this last cut UP, and have myself another spin.

Find out more about Flowers For Juno at the official page at Instagram here:  https://www.instagram.com/flowersforjuno

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