23 Apr 2018

Soundblab and Psych Insight give rave reviews for Flowers Must Die's new self released 2xLP 'Där Blommor Dör'


They say:

All right, set the controls for the heart of the Swedish psychedelic sun. This one is psych-prog-folk sonic bliss from start to finish.

Oh, the first tune, “Gör Det Inte” is a bit of a brunt force, nine minutes plus of fairly free-form psych-jazz. They say the takeoff is the toughest part of any space shot. And this one’s a tough launch. But after several plays, the tune reveals its deep-fired melodies. This one rambles and rumbles with wah-wah guitars, Lars Hofften’s pounding percussion, some sort of lovely insanity, deviant rock ‘n’ roll, a violin, weird keyboards, and a melodic foot on the gas pedal.

Then things slow a bit with “Gömma.” This is violin led (almost) folk psych that lays its heavy load with some sort of Swedish ancestral wisdom. Lisa Ekelund’s vocals haunt the dark back history of the tune...

Read the rest of the 10/10 review here: Soundblab

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As is my usual way of doing things I listened to this wide and sprawling double album through before reading anything about it. My first reaction was simply: ‘wow’. This felt to me like the sort of record that was going to get played a lot (I immediately pre-ordered a copy) over a long period of time. What’s more I very much felt like it was going to be one of those albums that was going to grow and mature in my head as time progressed. It was with some surprise, then, that on reading the press release on this album I found that these were tracks that had been recorded over a ten year period covering a number of different band line-ups. Unbelievably some tracks here never really made it onto the band’s previous albums.

What this album is actually doing, it seems to me, is drawing a line under what has gone before by bringing together a series of tracks that both complement each other and reflect Flowers Must Die’s development to date. It is also the last release on band member Rikard Daun’s label ‘rev/vega records’… so there is a real sense of moving on here. As such I would not recommend that anyone judge this album against the group’s previous release ‘Kompost‘, which was one of my favourites of last year, not because it is inferior… rather that it is coming from a different place and time...

Read the rest here: Psych Insight

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