Sunflower Bean: Straight Outta A Brooklyn Loft
Knowing my Brooklyn phobia, my friend Kevin Mazzarelli hasn’t gotten me to Baby’s All Right, the club where he spent Monday night mixing Sunflower Bean’s set and sent me a text reading “Holy shit, they’re good”.
So I was left on Bandcamp checking out their impressively raucous psychedelic indie rock EP, January 2015’s Show Me Your Seven Secrets, which sounds like garage rock via the Dream Syndicate with loud noise jams like “Rock And roll Heathen” (funny) and “Tame Impala” , while sounds like Hole if Hole were raised in the late 1960s.
“We’re all big Black Sabbath fans, especially in a live show,” bassist, lead vocalist and, ahem, Saint Laurent fashion model Julia Cumming claims in an interview with the New York Times (here). Sunflower Beans noodle too much for metal and they have a rough hewn psycho drabble aesthetic more at home in cool downtown clubs (Ludlow where art thou) then the Areas of metal (or the catwalks of Bryant Park) .
The EP has a youthful intensity and given the nobody in their twenties trio, Jacob Faber (drums) Nick Kivlen (vox/guitar) as well as Julia, that isn’t quite surprising. There is a sort of inquisitive arrogance to the band, who live together in a four room loft in Brooklyn like they are awaiting for the director of their reality show to shout action.
Though if that implies anything manufactured from the former Supercutie and band mates, even in a limited Pretty Wreckless manner, apparently you will have to look elsewhere. Meanwhile, you have to wonder what the Merges and Sub Pops are waiting on, whether on stage or on the catwalk, Sunflower Bean are just about ready to break.
Buy the EP here.
