Florry was named after a personality in Betty Smith’s novel A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, however listening to their fantastically energetic new album Sounds Like…, you surprise if it should even be some form of arcane verb. That means: to jam out with one’s greatest buddies as if the 8:30 p.m. daylight won’t ever fade. Or: to show one’s personal life right into a grand country-rock musical, whose songs are stuffed with jubilant exclamations and pauses for laughter and applause. The band’s seven members—who first received collectively in Philly, however at the moment are far and wide—are so within the pocket on their third album that you need to assume that “Florry” is a directive as a lot as a band title. Like: Let’s florry tonight.
A variety of that exuberance comes courtesy of bandleader Francie Medosch, who has clearly by no means met a riff she didn’t wish to play or a trope she couldn’t make her personal. It wasn’t till I learn the lyric sheet of Sounds Like… that I even acknowledged the malaise and discomfort that sits plainly in her songs; her voice is hearty and beseeching, and it typically sounds as if she’s singing via a large grin, like she will’t fairly imagine her personal band is ripping via these flamboyant barnstormers with such pleasure and ease. When she exclaims that she’d give a movie “5 out of 5” on opener “First it was a film, then it was a guide” (which was not not impressed by Holly Hunter in Broadcast Information) you wish to hoot and holler alongside together with her… till you correctly parse the total phrase: “If I wasn’t feeling so empty, child, I’d give that film 5 out of 5!”
These are the parameters of Sounds Like…: Attempting to acknowledge life’s inherent, eternal shittiness—I’m depressed; Holly Hunter didn’t win an Oscar for Broadcast Information—whereas retaining the positivity that fashioned the core of 2023’s The Holey Bible. Medosch finds her silver linings in parking tons and journeys to the films, in a “barbecue on Valentine’s with my greatest pal Eli” and the realisation that blasting Cher’s “If I May Flip Again Time” on repeat could be the one logical response to questioning “why you hate me a lot.” Aiding her is a band, and co-production by Colin Miller, that triangulates virtuosically crunchy teams like Dr. Canine with lifelong Dylan standom and the fuck-you sweetness of the early Olympia scene, discovering a central level that’s hooky, ramshackle, and boisterous abruptly.
Florry’s clever looseness is essential: Medosch most frequently sings about ragged emotions, and situations with a uncooked edge. The loping ballad “You Don’t Know,” seemingly addressed to somebody struggling via a bout of melancholy, zeroes in on a tiny imaginative and prescient of the long run (“One in every of today, you’re gonna be amazed”) whereas the terse “Horny” sandwiches intrusive ideas a few relationship between a easy affirmation: “Child’s loopy attractive.”
Regardless of the open-ended nature of a lot of her songs, Medosch nonetheless sees worth in a stitched-up, punch-the-air anthem. “Fairly Eyes Lorraine” follows a easy, well-established rock’n’roll format: The protagonist meets a tremendous woman who then exhibits her the methods of the world. Medosch approaches the concept with a sometimes laissez-faire angle—the long-lasting, howlable hook right here is solely “My woman’s received fairly eyes”—however she takes a lesson from her hero Holly Hunter: It’s not about what you’re saying, it’s about the way you say it.
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