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Music

Night Flowers Will Embrace You with Their Wholesome Guitar Pop

Get to know the Hull-via-London band with their optimistic new track "Hey Love."
Lauren O'Neill
London, GB

2018 is a prime time to embrace wholesomeness. And I mean beyond Dry January. Look, I've been doing it: cooking hearty, nourishing meals in my little kitchen, spending quality time with friends, trying to read and learn more. It’s also extended to my music tastes – I’ve been enjoying music that’s optimistic and sweet, supplementing my usual tastes of depressed_person_with_guitar.mp3. That’s why, when Night Flowers’ new video and single “Hey Love” (premiering here! Today!) landed in my inbox, I was especially excited to write about it.

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For the uninitiated, Night Flowers are Sophia, Chris, Greg, Sam, and Zeb, a self-described pop group formed in London, who describe themselves as “suckers for a catchy melody and a bit of guitar pop indie drama,” also noting that “hopefully we’re contributing something to that long tradition.” And certainly, I think they are. In the vein of artists like Frankie Cosmos, Night Flowers make music with melodies that sound like they’d glint gently in the sun if you could look at them. Their debut album Wild Notion is due for release on 13 April, and “Hey Love” is a track that represents its softer side, with prettily vague vocal harmonies, a reassuring message (“Insecurity comes naturally,” singer Sophia reminds us on the first verse), and a music video that celebrates the wonder at the world that comes when you’re in your early teens, on the cusp of the thousands of experiences that will come to make up your life’s messy patchwork.

Chatting to the band, they give a bit of context on the cute, unaffected video: “The video was shot up in Hull by a very talented photographer called Josh Moore and the two girls in it, Olivia and Alicia, are real life best pals,” I’m told. “The song is basically about friendship and positivity through hardship, which sometimes feels more difficult as you get older. We wanted something uncynical and real, so we all had a nice day out on the Humber coast and filmed the girls hanging out, just doing what they do naturally.”

That naturalism is one that seems to be a crucial part of what Night Flowers do. While their songs resemble the soundtrack to all your good dreams, lyrically they’re down to earth, and keen to make sure their output reflects back the realism of ups and downs. They say, for example, that “Hey Love” “is definitely riding an optimistic high,” though they add that “there’s also a lot of melancholy on the album: it’s a ying/yang thing, you can’t have one without the other.”

Wild Notion is an album that’s been a long time coming, but it’s worth the wait, packed as it is with full-bodied indie-riffs, which in turn are inflected by Night Flowers’ undeniable pop sensibility. Of the accomplishment of finally releasing a record, they tell me: “We’re so happy to finally get a full length out - we’ve had a few trials and tribulations along the way so to get this far feels an achievement in itself. Also we’d like it to be the best selling record of all time and them to bring back Top of the Pops solely so we can perform on it.”

You heard ‘em: pre-order Wild Notion here, hear “Hey Love” and watch the video above, and get a petition going for a Top of the Pops return while you’re at it. If in 2018, wholesomeness is the mood, Night Flowers are the band making the wide-eyed indie-pop to accompany it.

Night Flowers live dates:
Friday 27 April - The Lexington, London *ALBUM RELEASE SHOW*
Thursday 24 May - Picture House Social, Sheffield
Thursday 14 June - The Glade Cafe, Glasgow
Friday 15 June - Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
27 - 29 July - Indietracks Festival Follow Lauren on Twitter.