On a mild evening in early April at Liverpool’s Arts Bar, Flower Show are road testing songs from their forthcoming debut long-player, Painted Nails & Silver Bells. Formerly known as Lovecraft, as their new name suggests, the Merseyside six-piece have essentially acted on spring’s calling card.
Now consisting of Craig Sinclair (vocals, synths), Simon Gabriel (guitar, backing vocals), Lloyd Gabriel (keyboards, synths), Dave Miller (guitar), Dom Price (bass), and former Mazey Fade and Feral Wheel drummer, Terry Green, who replaces Rob Morris, Flower Show move the goal posts of indie-pop with the kind of fairy dust that has evaded Lee Mathers for all these years.
Live, Flower Show offer a new dimension; Green’s work from behind the kit opening these songs up to new possibilities. In the live setting, while these songs bake deep into the conscious, their guise from within the studio vaults is equally assured.
Sinclair and Miller are no strangers to the world skewed pop exotica, both exploring these odd-ball frontiers as News From Neptune. There’s more of that on offer on Painted Nails & Silver Bells, led by the colourful cruise ship serenades of The Macerator and I’ve Forgotten.
With contributions from Willow Beggs and arrangements by Ex-Easter Island Head’s Jon Herring, the delicate nuance throughout the songs on Painted Nails & Silver Bells is something you keep going back to rather than the disposable “charity shop pop” of which the band suggests they are the exponents. First case in point is opening track, Spitting at the Walls. With a sprinkling of synths and brass, Flower Show start their genre-straddling modes with a rockabilly glam racket that explores the more playful side of Roxy Music.
Flower Show - Painted Nails & Silver BellsElsewhere, the countrified jangle psychedelia of Green Grows the Grass is illuminated by Gabriel and Miller’s shimmering guitar interplay, as Sinclair picks his way through the library, marrying up words and phrases with aplomb. (“Fruit on the vine / Life on the life … But we’re alright / we’re all empty inside”). It leans effortlessly into She Will Have Music. A richly arranged, chiming nightscape where every note glitters and lights up everything around it.
Flower Show’s scope continues to broaden on the slow burning I’m Here for It. With a line like, “slit my throat with an olive branch,” it’s likened to a Floydian acid trip. Something that Bags for Life is not. A DIY pop anthem in waiting, it’s the kind of track only a band from Liverpool could write. “Is it gonna get better / When will it ever get better?” asks Sinclair during the chorus, the band also chiming in with the burning question. The answer? It probably won’t…
But all one can do is trudge on, and Flower Show do so with Drink the House. An emphatic closer that moves through the gears with grace, Drink the House recalls late-’90s/early-’00s ethos where you led with your best and finish the same way. With Price’s brisk, glammed-up bass line and Miller and Gabriel’s guitar combat, Sinclair declares as “The world runs dry” he drinks the house, echoing the same sentiments as Mark Eitzel did during Jesus’ Hands (“I’ve got a thirst that would make the ocean proud.”)
Other than fellow Merseyside favourites, Rongorongo, few shape-shift the way Flower Show do, and on Painted Nails & Silver Bells, they do it with songs that are infectious and well-fashioned. The arrangements alone, revealing something new each time, and it’s this depth that has been lacking in local guitar-based music over the last several years. Flower Show lift the standards in what is a confident showing of pop-infused songcraft.
Painted Nails & Silver Bells is out tomorrow. Purchase from Bandcamp.
