Southampton newcomers Shadow Flowers make an immediately compelling introduction with ‘Paraselene’, a towering glimpse into their debut album Blood Book.
Built from enormous layers of distorted guitar, melody and dreamlike atmosphere, ‘Paraselene’ occupies the thrilling middle ground between shoegaze, grunge and alternative rock. My Bloody Valentine, Smashing Pumpkins and Deftones provide useful reference points, but there’s already something wonderfully distinctive emerging from the noise. Early support from BBC Introducing suggests others are beginning to hear it too.
Led by songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Aaron Mills, alongside Ash Babb and Patrick White, Shadow Flowers seem fascinated by the point where beauty begins to buckle under pressure. The title refers to the optical phenomenon of a false moon, an illusion Mills uses as a striking metaphor for grief, memory and the way familiar things can return to us strangely transformed.
That philosophy extends throughout Blood Book. Recorded with Ian Davenport and mixed and mastered by Peter Fletcher, the album promises to reach beyond its shoegaze foundations towards the romantic darkness of The Cure and the grand production instincts of Phil Spector.
Most excitingly, Shadow Flowers aren’t interested in making rock music that feels perfectly controlled. ‘Paraselene’ sounds deliberately precarious: huge, luminous and always seemingly seconds away from collapsing under its own weight. It makes for a genuinely exhilarating beginning for the band.
