A small chat with Flowertown on their two studio albums, San Francisco, and Smashing Pumpkins.
Diogo: Flowertown released two studio albums in the same year [2021]. Both of these records turned out to be slices of delicate indie-pop and slowcore. Do you consider yourselves to be hardworking, goal-oriented, and, above all, ambitious people regarding the music business? What is the chemistry like between the members?
Karina: Flowertown has always been really fun. It’s the best kind of work – the kind that leaves you wanting to do more. Flowertown started with the Covid shutdown so we suddenly had a lot more time. Goals make me uneasy and ambition would suppose that I knew where I was going (:
Mike and I work well together. I’ve learned a lot from working with him – he encourages me to try things I assume I can’t do and he has a lot of skills and knowledge that I’ve learned from. We’re also close friends and trust each other. He puts up with the ways that I can be difficult; I know what kind of cookies he likes; we get along.
Mike: I would say I’m somewhat goal-oriented. I like writing and recording music and working on albums. Working with Karina is great as I feel like we’re a good match work ethic-wise. She also inspires me to be less lazy than I can sometimes get. My cat, Penny, likes Flowertown because she gets treats when we work on recordings.
Diogo: The tracks on both Flowertown and Time Trials are simply stellar. Either they were produced a long time ago, carefully studied and perfectioned, or they're nothing but bursts of energy effectively converted into blissful harmony. As a band, do you see yourselves as spontaneous musicians or long-term planners?
Karina: Thank you. The first Flowertown collections – the two EPs that came out on Paisley Shirt and then together as the self-titled LP on Mt St Mtn – were very spontaneous. We would trade voice memos back and forth but we probably only played the songs once or twice before we recorded them. I think we’ve become a little more methodical over time. I don’t think we plan the songs any more than we ever did, but there is more time between writing them and recording them – just because life has become busier. We do spend a lot of time mixing the recordings and adding little things.
Mike: Correct.
"The Way Back", Flowertown | Video by Karina Gill & Mike Ramos
Diogo: I'm able to find a connection between your music and nature, or the organic side of the world. This is evident in "Rocks and Air", for example. The drums subtly entering, the cadence of the voice; it all sounds pure.
Karina: Mike sent me a chord progression that became that song. The vocal melody came into my mind immediately, even before I sat down with a guitar to play it. I had been reading a book about southern Greece and felt a longing for a stark landscape. So, yes, it’s about a longing for a certain kind of natural landscape. Mike and I just seemed to find that song easily. And Mike is a great drummer – he added the drums at the end and was able to stick with the woozy structure.
Mike: I think Karina wrote some really great lyrics for this one. Lately, I’ve been singing some of the verses when we play this live, but I sometimes mix up the phrasings.
Diogo: One of the tracks that surprised me the most in Time Trials is "Nicholas Cage Defies All Age". Usually, I find your sonority to be closer to indie pop traditions, but there's a melancholic atmosphere englobing this beautiful song. It's ominous and strangely peaceful at the same time. For some reason, it reminds me of the unexpected outro of Smashing Pumpkins' "Thru The Eyes Of Ruby": noisier, but equally ethereal and out of place.
Karina: I’ll let Mike weigh in on the Smashing Pumpkins reference. That song originally had lyrics but we ditched them and then Mike made knocking sounds with the plastic cover of a toy glockenspiel through a ton of reverb and it sounded like a haunted construction site (which a city can sound like sometimes).
Mike: “Nicholas Cage” was a fun song to record. Obviously we have a soft spot for Mr. Cage’s movies. Regarding the song “Ruby”, I’ve always been a sucker for reprises and cool outros. In fact, I feel like everything except the outro should have been scrapped. Maybe I just prefer Adore to Mellon Collie.
Diogo: Do you enjoy living in San Francisco, California? I've heard it's a similar city to my hometown, Lisbon: bumpy and narrow roads, Ponte 25 de Abril and Golden Gate Bridge, the artistic community...
Karina: I do enjoy living in San Francisco. I hope to one day visit Lisbon. I moved here ten years ago from Brooklyn, New York. It took me a while to get used to the friendliness here. In some ways it’s a hard place to live – all the tech wealth makes it bizarre – but, like any city, if you don’t need a lot of money, and you get a little lucky, you can find ways to live as a low-paid/semi-employed artist type. There are a lot of us around here.
Mike: I grew up here in San Francisco. I have not yet been to Lisbon, but would love to see it one day. Despite everything that’s changed over the years, San Francisco still feels like home. It’s nice to live in the Bay Area where there are so many artists doing so many different, cool things in a relatively small geographic area.
Diogo: Select a picture taken from the Internet and explain the reasons behind your choice.
Mike: The best thing Oscar Wilde ever did.
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