There’s something great about a three-piece—think The Cocteau Twins, TheClean, Galaxie 500—and the way that irreducible nucleus takes its strength from its limitations, making a virtue of its purity. And so it is with London trio Flowers, returning with their second album Everybody’s Dying To Meet You in February 2016 via Fortuna Pop! (EU) and Kanine (US). Over the course of ten intensely thrilling pop songs, singer Rachel Kenedy’s ethereal vocals and Sam Ayres textured guitar is backed by the powerful, metronomic beat of drummer Jordan Hockley.

The inception of Flowers started with Ayres searching for a singer for over a year when he posted one last fateful advert, stating he wanted to make pop songs like “early Madonna through a broken tape machine.” This led him to Kenedy, and peculiarly, the forming of Flowers. Right away the two fell into a deeply creative and romantic partnership. Sharing a flat in East London with their adorable dog Batman, they restore vintage musical equipment and feverishly create demos.

The first batch, polished up by none other than Bernard Butler, turned into debut Do What You Want To, It’s What You Should Do released in 2013. Created during a period of illness for Ayres, the result is an album that, while exquisite in its own way, is necessarily subdued. For Everybody’s Dying to Meet You the band retreated to Bark Studios in Walthamstow to work with producer Brian O’Shaughnessey (The Clientele, Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine), a return home for Ayres, who was born and spent most of his life in the area. It proved to be the perfect fit for Flowers, the sessions enabling them to capture the essence of both their dynamic live sound and their distortion-laden home demos. Effortlessly blending pop songs with noise while leaving space for more stripped back elements, the recordings strike a perfect balance between the sweetness of Kenedy’s voice and Ayres’ abrasive guitar stylings. Their musical inspiration from shoegaze, C86 and New Zealand’s Flying Nun label is now evident.

Flowers
Everybody’s Dying to Meet You
Out 2/12/16 via Fortuna Pop/Kanine Records

Tracklist:
Pull My Arm
Bitter Pill
Ego Loss
All at Once
Intrusive Thoughts
How Do You Do
Tammy
Russian Doll
My Only Friend
Bathroom Sink