Making a switch in the construction of your music and taking some other cues from your early EPs to your debut album is an interesting tactic that can certainly backfire.
In a way, you are making some sort of switch even before you have come up with a big release, and on the other, what if you are not adept, or properly inspired to do so?
No, that that doesn’t seem to be a problem for Baltimore quartet Tomato Flower, and their debut album simply (and it seems properly) titled No.
On their initial EPs, the band was playing with all sorts of easygoing psychedelia, and then, they seem to have said, no we will take cues from the late seventies, early eighties, angular rhythmic sounds of The Talking Heads, Gang of Four, even The Residents, and go from there.
It is an intriguing concept as such, but also one that could go completely wrong if you don’t have the adequate chops to create such a sound.
Yet it seems that for Mike Alfieri, Ruby Mars, Jamison Murphy, Austyn Wohlers who comprise Tomato Flower that was not a problem at all. And to have something negative as a key leading thought on the album and actually turn it into something quite positive in the end is quite a feat in itself.
Actually, Tomato Flower has created something quite complex using essentially simple elements, creating at the same time music that is intriguing, daring, and above all, listenable.
