White Flowers - Are You (2022)

The British duo White Flowers made a great impact on my personal view of the dream pop/shoegaze music out there a year ago with the fantastic debut album Day by Day. There's some new material now from the duo: the short EP Are You sounds differently but it's not a bad sign at all.

Although their official band description says they are "isolated from any kind of music scene and enveloped by the cold Brutalism of Preston" (I love this sentence really), their music fits a broader environment of the dreamy but also post-punk-like cold musicians like The KVB for instance. But this can be deceiving as they managed to make themselves known for being quite genre-fluid: Day by Day was utterly ethereal but its remixes made a perfect SPC ECO-style trip-hop experience. This time, their songs seem to be lighter with more pop in their dream pop. It seems to be disposed of many layers to show more of the melodic and sweet side of their music. But the impressive atmosphere-generating skills can be heard here as well, mainly on my favourite here This Is Not with its deep and airy backgrounds.

The British will open for Beach House on the incoming Euro tour and I can't wait to check them live.

Are You costs 5 EUR (4 GBP).

White Flowers - Day by Day (2021)

Check: This Is Not

Country: UK

Genre: light dream pop

Label: Tough Love

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White Flowers - Day by Day (2021)

White Flowers are Joey Cobb and Katie Drew, a Preston-based duo (the geographic aspect is not without meaning here as the artists point to the North England's atmosphere as one of the biggest inspirations) who is called, and it's hardly an exaggeration, "one of the most exciting young bands in the UK right now". Their long-play debut Day by Day is bound to make some noise on the dreamy music scene.

There's some of Beach House's dreaminess, some of The KVB's industrial ambiance and some of Still Corners' warm and tropical beauty in the duo's music. It is fueled by Drew's exceptionally dreamy vocals and tons of reverbs and layered sounds. The melodies may be simple but the point here is to make an ocean of dreaminess and this is a goal the British definitely reached (just listen to songs like Night Drive or Day by Day to feel like sinking under the airy waves  of this wonderful dream pop). It is also kept in a particularly dark atmosphere, no wonder that among the tags describing the album, one can find noir pop as well.

The story says that the album was being written and polished for years while the artists learnt how to create their music from zero. This resulted in a release you can feel was carefully composed and treated with love in every second of its runtime. Another thing is that it depicts the couple's feelings from teenagehood to their twenties and all of this time's uncertainty, doubts and weirdness or, in Drew's words: "it’s come of age in this weird apocalyptic time".

Day by Day costs 7 GBP.

Check: Day by Day

Country: UK

Genre: dark dream pop

Label: Tough Love

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