Max Diez

On Friday, May 16th at 10am, katmoth speaks with New York Minimalist folk quartet, Florist, ahead of their May 17th show at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco.

For their latest release, Jellywish, Florist invite listeners to question everything — to imagine a world where magic, surrealism, and the supernatural are our companions in day-to-day life. It dares to present a realm of possibility and imagination in a time that feels evermore prescriptive, limiting, and awful.

The album finds Florist exploring life’s big questions without offering silver linings, morals, or definitive answers. Instead, the band asks perhaps the most difficult of questions: Is it possible to break free from our ingrained thought cycles and pedestrian way of life? That, Florist posits, may be the only way to be truly happy, fulfilled, and free.

Singer, guitarist, and principal songwriter Emily Sprague says that the record is purposely complicated. “It’s a gentle delivery of something that is really chaotic, confusing, and multifaceted,” she explains. “It has this technicolor that’s inspired by our world and also fantasy elements that we can use to escape our world.”

Photo: V Haddad

Lost n Found recently caught up with prolific New York artist Nate Amos (Water From Your Eyes, My Idea) who has recorded and self-released hundreds of songs under the This Is Lorelei moniker.  Tune in on Wednesday, May 14th at 11am to hear their conversation.

After a decade plus, Box for Buddy, Box for Star marks the first attempt at a traditional, intentionally written full-length album for Amos. Nate describes the bulk of This Is Lorelei’s discography as “unedited diary entries,” written and recorded without much forethought, regard for genre or reverence for albums as thematic bodies of work, so oddly enough, Box for Buddy, Box for Star is both a fresh start and the culmination of years of diligent, interesting songwriting.

The album embraces traditional pop songcraft and a confessional, carefully written brand of lyricism, dabbling in the kind of classic singer-songwriter cliches Amos never imagined toying with—but not without the counterbalancing force of shitpost-y irony, which listeners have come to expect from him.

On Box for Buddy, Box for Star, Amos successfully pulls off a series of balancing acts: past and future, confidence and self-mockery, country and electronic music, self-improvement and accountability, openness and self-preservation. Nate Amos reaches into the depths of his personal hell and emerges with an intensely affecting album that offers listeners space to contemplate their own past, future, and conception of transformation.

The band is playing May 8th & 9th at Rickshaw Stop in SF, so tune in to hear a sample of what’s to come and learn all about the band’s new record, Noble and Godlike in Ruin.

For a band that seems to thrive on collapse, it’s simply amazing that this US/Japanese quartet is now celebrating their 31st year. Though Deerhoof long ago established itself as one of the greatest rock groups ever to stride the earth—and if you think that’s hyperbole, you haven’t spent enough time listening to Deerhoof —the furiously inventive quartet releases new albums on the schedule of a young band still hungry for its first break.

As Noble and Godlike in Ruin reaffirms, each one discovers some previously unknown combination of candy-coated hard-rock riffs and free-jazz percussive freakouts, sideways J-pop hooks and fearsome dissonance, trenchant social commentary and surrealist humor.

This music is joyful and foreboding, cybernetic and deeply human, carrying an implicit note of defiant optimism in their refusal to bow to convention or received wisdom. Fronting it all is Satomi Matsuzaki’s inimitable alto, whose plainspoken calm can seem strangely outside of the band’s maelstrom.

Deerhoof is defined by such paradoxes.

Photo: Satoru Eguchi