While Richard and Ed Baluyut are rightly well-known for their work in Versus, their time in Flower is not as recognized. The NYC band bloomed (sorry) some few decades ago, before going away, or withering if you want to continue the theme, only to bloom again now. The band's first album in decades is here now via Ernest Jenning Record Co. and it's called None Is (But Once Was) and it's everything you'd want from these guys.
Joined by Ian James (Cell) and Andrew Bordwin (Ruby Falls), the Baluyut brothers craft hypnotic missives of post-punk as Flower. The music within the grooves of this record is something special, and any fan of Versus who perhaps isn't as familiar with Flower will find lots to love here. No problem. "Lost Horizon" has the kind of lilt that feels like that of the material of the other Baluyut band, while "Annihilation Time" and "Nonetheless" are more direct, punchy bits of business. Elsewhere, the lyrical "Wayward" suggests some Sonic Youth material from the Rather Ripped-era, though this one is more objectively pretty.
I hesitate to use that adjective because, as anyone with even a passing knowledge of Versus understands, a Baluyut composition never sacrifices energy for effect. Even a gorgeous cut like "Glass Brick Window" here features passages that nearly threaten to erupt into a punk-y frenzy. That tension, and the dynamic of the melodic and the chaotic is a hallmark of how the Baluyuts approach post-punk songwriting, and with the input here of the rhythm section of James and Bordwin, the songs land in a different way than those of Versus do. "Totality", the longest cut here on None Is (But Once Was) takes some real chances in terms of style, offering up one of the looser things I've heard from these players to date, but the elegant closer "The Dregs of Privilege" maps out territory that seems to suggest early R.E.M., Joy Division, and mid-Nineties peers Superchunk. This is just a fantastic track and one which concisely updates the kind of post-punk we heard from lots of bands in the Clinton years, with a good deal more focus. The thing never veers off course, and the four players work up a momentum that's, if not furious, at least intense in its own way. For anyone who ever thought that American indie had reached a kind of high-point with the work of Superchunk and Versus, for example, this Flower album is here to suggest a variation on that familiar template.
None Is (But Once Was) is out on Friday via Ernest Jenning Record Co..
More details on Flower via the band's official Facebook page.
[Photo: Ernest Jenning Record Co.]