Deepest Wellsprings of Being, the new album from Ohio-based band Flourish, is the sound of 90s shoegaze run through the cinematic style of David Lynch and the post-futurism of Blade Runner. The album takes listeners through landscapes of ambient guitar and synth before plunging them into the sludge of a technological dystopia with the heaviness of post-metal and grunge. Along the way there’s moments of beauty in guitar melodies, vocal interludes, emotional builds and guitar riffs that carry you off to another place and another time. It’s cinematic, sure, but the quartet knows when to just let a song be a song.
Opener ‘Waves of Nazare’ crashes over you like the titular Portuguese surf its named for, while follow-up ‘Heavy Mountains’ returns you to the land but in a no less grand setting, as epic guitar and drums recall classic Explosions in the Sky and God Is An Astronaut. First single ‘The Towpath’ introduces vocals and another dimension of the band while our featured track, ‘New Cosmic Terror’, is the band’s boldest statement yet, infusing synthesizers into their mix in a prominent way. The final three tracks create a triptych of life in a Midwest town and flow effortlessly to close it out. Only a band so versed in speaking without words can deliver the type of depth and layered shoegaze heard here. They’ve spent a long time perfecting the mechanism of wordless melody as an instrumental post rock band. So that now with addition of vocals, the band’s sound is evermore intricate and multifaceted. Deepest Wellsprings of Being is the sound of a road-tested band ready to advance their presence and style from the incredible Ohio shoegaze scene to the rest of the world.
Deepest Wellsprings of Being will be available on LP and digital on September 27, 2024 via Lost Future Records and can pre-ordered on Bandcamp HERE
