Night Flowers - Wild Notion

Rating:

Glimmering guitars and melt in the mouth melodies.

There’s a moment on an evening commute where you settle into your sought-after seat comfortable in the knowledge you’ve secured a spot on the first train home after the longest of days at work and you let your consciousness send you on a daze between the here and now and the world of daydreams. This commuter’s conundrum is often driven by a pair of headphones and a carefully curated soundtrack. If there was ever an album that could flood your ears in those moments, it would surely be London dream-poppers Night Flowers debut Wild Notion.

Glimmering guitars and melt in the mouth melodies let the sun seep into your mind as you find yourself humming along to their thoughtfully placed harmonies and doo-wops, even from the opening moments of opener ‘Sandcastles’, and the honey-drop twang of ‘Resolver.’

Riding a unique line between the effervescent dream-pop of Real Estate and the middle-class city-adoring indie-consciousness of Stars and Broken Social Scene, Night Flowers schmooze you with simmering shoegaze-like sheens. ‘Night Alive’ is a multi-vocal mesh of jangling harmonies as if you were listening to Real Estate on acid, whilst vocalist Sophia Petitt dazzles your ears as if she were dangling stars in your eyes on the calming ‘Let Her In.’ Closer ‘Cruel Wind’ creeps up on you, delivering a solo that slides through your mind like the sun shines in on a summer morning.

‘Wild Notion’ is beautiful music for tranquil moments, a suite of hazy dream-pop left for rainy days. That’s where the illusion crumbles, when it isn’t a rainy day, and your mind doesn’t need taking away, these songs become more lack than lustre.

Night Flowers' refusal to conform to a set sound allows their dream-pop musings to flourish like the sun their sounds imagine, and if they can continue to hypnotise with harmonies, they’ll go far. Jack Press