Author
James Darton
Contributing Editor
Welcome to the first instalment of Floom Sounds, our ongoing playlist of flower-themed songs that we'll be updating on a semi-regular basis. The link to flowers may be tenuous at times, but we hope the sheer genre-spanning good taste on display (ahem) will more than makes up for it!
If you have any flower-themed songs that you particularly love, we’d love to take a listen and maybe feature them in future editions. Drop us an email at [email protected].
Listen to the Floom Sounds Spotify playlist here! We'll update it with every new instalment.
In The Flowers - Animal Collective
Okay, so they may have gone off the deep-end a little bit in recent years, but for a while Animal Collective were making some of the most joyous and interesting pop music around. What’s more, they often managed to capture the euphoria of escaping to the natural world whilst using a whole array of weird and wonderful musical machinery. ‘In The Flowers’, the first track from Merriweather Post Pavillion exemplifies this: Abstract squelching gives way to melodic guitar lines and ethereal vocals before finally exploding into a glorious, uplifting cacophony. It really does evoke a trek through dense woodlands, only to emerge into a meadow of incredible blooms.
Brown Grass - Gregory Porter
The temporal nature of plants and flowers is part of what makes them so special: the fact that they are but fleeting, beautiful things to be celebrated while they last. Of course all good things come to an end, and its a metaphor that has been used throughout music history to illustrate lost love. Gregory Porter’s Liquid Spirit was one of the better albums in recent years to occupy that “token soul/jazz/blues album in the music collection of a middle-aged dad”. ‘Brown Grass’ was one of the highlight tracks: the understated delivery, mournful saxaphone solo and endless refrain of, “Now I find myself falling down on brown grass…” all pack a surprisingly affecting emotional punch.
Seeds - Georgia Anne Muldrow
Georgia Anne Muldrow is a true auteur, lending her jazzy, psychedelic tendencies to a whole host of projects across the world of left-field hip-hop/R&B. Of everything she’s put her name to however, our favourite is probably Seeds, the 2012 album crafted entirely by Stones Throw producer Madlib. The title track is a masterclass in scattered loops: bombastic horns, symphonic strings and a distinctly hippy-ish array of vocals, lending an environmentally-conscious theme to proceedings.
Bohemian Forest - Panthu Du Prince
Panthu Du Prince’s Black Noise came out over half a decade ago, but both it and its predecessor This Bliss are still arguably the benchmark LPs in the world of minimal-inspired house music. It’s an album that incorporates field recordings and generally earthy, natural sounds to great effect: in ‘Bohemian Forest,’ you get percussion as crunchy as underfoot leaves and chimes that ring out celestially through the air, multiplying and overlapping over a joyously bouncy bassline.
Wild Flowers - Ryan Adams
Ryan Adams has spent what feels like a lifetime (certainly a lifetime’s worth of records) trying to match the excellence of his debut solo album, Heartbreaker. He probably never will, and its immediate follow-up Gold was a real mis-step of over-produced cheese for the most part. It was at its best however when it tried to match the fragile beauty of its predecessor, and ‘Wild Flowers’ is a highlight as a result. Over a delicately picked guitar, Adams’ tenderly pitched voice tells us how ‘everything went up in smoke like wild flowers.’
