BONUS Track of the Day: The Flowers of God–A Challenged Sound
12 Mar
By Jesseca Bagherpour
When my friend Andy Young, who’s played drums for Lift to Experience, Ed Harcourt, Josh T. Pearson and many others, told me he had been recording an entire album on his own, under the moniker The Flowers of God, I was intrigued but skeptical. It took a lot of balls and confidence for him to decide to write and record an entire album’s worth of songs all on his own. But would it be any good?
When he gave me a link to his new music, my misgivings melted away and I was immediately impressed. Andy handled nearly every aspect of the album, from writing the lyrics and music to covering vocals, guitar and (of course) drums. He is The Flowers of God. On top of that, this is his first attempt at being a singer/songwriter/guitar player.
I’m a sucker for any band that can replicate the cool 60s-rock sound and The Flowers of God is chock full of that (with an emphasis on The Velvet Underground), with some cool, layered vocals (all Andy’s) to boot. In fact, I was so taken with how cool the music is that I eagerly volunteered to become a tambourine player/backup singer when he decides to form a band (I don’t play any “real” instruments, but I’ve got rhythm and have a knack for harmonies … but this isn’t about me). And Jaime and I realized we needed to post something about this band ASAP.
Here’s what Andy had to say about The Flowers of God:
I demoed two songs at my house in Oak Cliff about a week ago and re-recorded everything at Pearl Street Studios a few days after that with Kelly Upshaw from The Hope Trust. Kelly was kind enough to play the bass parts I’m not good enough to play, and to bear with me while I made bass noises at him trying to explain what I was attempting on the demos. We’ve recorded two songs so far and I have several more that we plan on getting done sometime before the end of April. It’s maybe that it starts as an EP or maybe since the process feels very easy that an LP will happen just as quickly.
Really I just sat down one day last week and said, “Today, for once in my life, I will finish a song” … and to my surprise I did. After I got that first one out of the way a few more came just as quickly. I guess I just finally decided that I had something to say, even if it was about parts of my life I’m not particularly proud of. Or things that I struggle with.
The name is actually what I wanted to call the backing band for the new Josh T. Pearson record, but we have other plans for that, so I just had to use it for myself as it seemed to get such a reaction (good and bad) from people when I mentioned it.
I’m not so much thinking about playing live at the moment as finishing the recordings. When that’s done I’ll assemble a crack team of people like me that can almost play, and we’ll see what happens.
And here’s a taste of the music (it’s still a rough mix, so we can only offer it to you streaming right now):
The Flowers of God–A Challenged Sound