Flowers Telegraphed To All Parts Of The World

Album review

A project helmed by Elephant 6 affiliate Jennifer Baron, a onetime member of the Ladybug Transistor, free-spirited psych-pop purveyors the Garment District present their first album in eight years, Flowers Telegraphed to All Parts of the World. The set was recorded in a friend's rural Pennsylvania home studio during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, which found Baron expanding her idiosyncratic arrangements even further with strings, horns, and various percussion instruments on top of the project's carefully curated suite of analog synths and vintage drum and effects machines. For the gear heads, that includes a Farfisa Syntorchestra, a 1960s UMI Buzz Tone Volume Expander, a 1970s Roland Paraphonic 505, an '80s Sequential Pro One, a Roland Dimension D, 808 drums samples, and more. While the Garment District's previous album, 2015's Luminous Toxin, was essentially a solo LP, Baron is joined here by returning lead vocalist Lucy Blehar (Baron's cousin), vocalist Alex Korshin, guitarist/vocalist Dan Koshute, bassist Corry Drake, live drummers Shivika Asthana and Sean Finn, and several others, including the Ladybug Transistor's Gary Olson (trumpet). The project's fourth album overall and most ambitious yet marks their debut for Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records. The mercurial 45-minute trip begins with a slowly expanding, drum-less intro before launching into a lava lamp-friendly, full-band groove on "Left on Coast," whose giddy pop is fronted by the airy-voiced Blehar. The grooves rarely let up as Flowers Telegraphed to All Parts of the World makes its way through a series of trippy, shape-shifting songs and equally compelling instrumentals, although treble-heavy third track (and Human Expression cover) "Following Me" borders on vintage twee pop (replete with glockenspiel), and the spacy "Moon Pie and Moon Gold" forgoes a true rhythm section for snaky bass and thumping drums that drop in and out on occasion for emphasis. However, those are easily outnumbered by tracks like highlight "The Island of Stability," a rousing fusion of psychedelic pop and post-punk led by Korshin, and the funky "Cooling Station," whose referee whistles and flatulent synth bass add whimsy to programmed beats and rotating synthesizer solos. Whether, on the whole, Flowers Telegraphed is haphazard and indulgent or infectious and stimulating is up to the listener, but why can't it be both?
© Marcy Donelson /TiVo