Sunflower Bean - Twentytwo in Blue

The Guardian 80

(Lucky Number)

When this Brooklyn trio first emerged with 2016’s Human Ceremony, with band T-shirts and scraggly hair, they looked like archetypal indie rockers. Two years on, singer/bassist Julia Cumming is the epitome of blond chic while guitarist/vocalist Nick Kivlen and drummer Jacob Faber’s tailored moustaches and coiffured curls are more synonymous with 70s soft rock. The metamorphosis is mirrored in their music, which has transformed from a tuneful mix of shoegaze, grunge and psychedelia into a bigger, bolder pop-rock beast with huge riffs, Byrds-y jangles, funkier rhythms and sassier, dreamier vocals. At times they recall Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac.

The Guardian 60

(Lucky Number)

There are so many great lost venues that bands like Sunflower Bean will never get to play. The London Astoria. Leeds’s Cockpit. The OC’s Bait Shop. Fifteen years ago it was much easier for a photogenic young Brooklyn indie outfit to snaffle enough attention to graduate from sticky-floor supports to the bigger stages. This follow-up to a promising but reticent debut shows the trio won’t die wondering if they could’ve crossed over. Lead singer Julia Cumming is higher in the mix, the songwriting is sharper, and the fuzzy atmospherics have been dialled down and drums toughened up. This glittering confidence pays off on the majestic, mid-paced I Was a Fool, and the luscious, wistful Twentytwo.   

Less convincing is the clean-shirt power pop of Crisis Fest, an essay on Trump’s American dystopia that’s more shallow splash than deep dive. Cumming has a bright, flexible voice that’s pleasant enough to listen to, yet sometimes fails to fully engage with the emotions expressed in her lyrics. What the album lacks is that corona of curious magic their hero Neil Young calls “the spook”. Fortunately, it doesn’t feel like it’s far away.

Drowned In Sound 40

Yawn. Whenever I listen to this album, I imagine the kids of Sunflower Bean huddled in their snug apartment, brainstorming a checklist. Quick – what styles and themes can we rip off that will please the most people? ‘I Was A Fool’ bears more than a passing resemblance to the Mac’s most beloved hit, ‘Dreams’ – our intrepid peddlers cut and pasted the exact same intro and outro, borrowed from the same palette, robbed a few of Lindsey Buckingham’s tricks, and even riffed on the same evergreen theme of unreliable lovers. Yup. Everyone loves Rumours, so why not engineer yr lead single around its glass bead curtain? Check also ‘small town ennui that climaxes in arson’, via the routine T-Rex imitation ‘Burn It’. Check also ‘non-ironic celebration of the short leash’ via the uninspired Gary Glitter stomp of ‘Puppet Strings’. Check also ‘neo-hippy Velvet Underground fluff on the eternal youth of romance’ via ‘Any Way You Like’. Yup. Sunflower Bean just wanna drive us from trope to trope, and switch up the records in the jukebox every three songs.

But is this a problem, you might ask. I won’t deny, Julia Cumming has some decent pipes; then again, I also can’t deny that the bakeries in big-box supermarkets can spin some decent buttercream icing. The rhythm section keeps the rhythm and sets the ambience, and that’s about all you can remark about it; sometimes, like on the JAMC downer ‘Only A Moment’, I tend to forget that the bass guitar is even there. And ‘Memoria’ at least conveys a genuinely bittersweet conflict between the growing daughter and her helicopter mother, a clean break too often simplified in the typical bildungsroman story.

Beyond that, though, our flower peddlers serve functional rock music, plastic utensils for rudimentary needs, easily disposable and just as easily replaced. And that’s frustrating, for several reasons – like when part of yr cutlery set includes a “prerequisite protest song”, aka the sunny, Bachman-Turner Overdrive-esque ‘Crisis Fest’. (Hot tip – Ex-Hex did it better.) Sorry, but those flimsy ridges can’t cut through the filet mignon situation on our hands – especially not when the only tangible gripes you’ve got are “been in school for ten years now / 80 grand in debt you’re down”, and a torn-up dress. Those are both legitimate concerns, of course – but then, does this imply that the “we” in the chorus’s rallying cry - We brought you into this place / you know we can take you out - pertains exclusively to college-educated cis women? See also the pseudo-psych ‘Human For’, and the rather clunky refrain ”I don’t need your religion”. Atheism as radicalism was really only cool/shocking in yr hunky dory high school years; who’s forcing heterosexual Cumming to abide by fundamental Christianity, anyway?

What concerns me most about Sunflower Bean, though, is this: at the end of the day, I can’t say I detest Twentytwo in Blue. I wouldn’t be caught dead cranking this in my car, but I must admit with a grunt that some moments are kinda nice. That’s the crux, though – why did the hype machine settle on this lacy doily, when so many other artists in less sought-after pockets of the world wield sharper knives and stranger forks? The only answer I can come up with is proximity to New York, and thus all the platforms at their fingertips, which can disseminate their vanilla-scented postcards for no other reason beyond their pleasant smell and glossy finish. Will no one return the letter to sender?