We are very pleased to welcome to the beautiful music collective, Exploding Flowers, a Los Angeles-based quartet, who create a wonderful sound that recalls so many of our favourite bands.
Their unique blending of various styles, create a jangle pop that touches on 70’s-era Chilton/Twilley, mid-80’s ‘Splash Of Colour’ scene and the early Creation sound, New Zealand guitar pop of The Chills & The Bats, hints of the Australian label Summershine Records, L.A.’s Paisley Underground, and 90’s noise pop all perfectly mutated, and swirled into their own modern day hook-filled racket. They also remind me of Robyn Hitchcock, The Byrds, and even at times The Barracudas, Dot Dash & Skytone.
Rob Morgan describes it up perfectly: ”Exploding Flowers tip their collective hats towards some intriguing music. Sure, the twelve strings chime like the Byrds in flight as you would expect but there’s a plainly chorded organ harking back to the Chills and numerous US 60s garage bands or even the early sides by the Sea Urchins(think “Sullen Eyes”)…The sound is fresh and vivid, and the songs are superb too.”
”The music will draw you in and the lyrics will intrigue you and you will sing these songs all summer.” (https://agoldfishcalledregret.wordpress.com/).
A DJ at KCRW stated that the Exploding Flowers had “some of the most dynamic, self-assured, jangly pop music that I’ve ever encountered in a while. There were twinges of psychedelia in just the right places, and all sorts of cool effects pedals being put to great use.” (DJ Marion Hodges).
“Stumbling Blocks” (beauty 051) includes guest vocalist Suki Ewers’ (Mazzy Star, Opal) duet on the song “Are We So Disposable?” and is the follow up to Exploding Flowers’ self-titled debut album on Smash It Up! Records(and an EP on the Edition 59 label).
Exploding Flowers – Stumbling Blocks
Beauty 051
$15.00 CDN OUT NOW!
“Exploding Flowers is a Los Angeles-based quartet, comprised of members of many other cool bands. Their unique brew of jangle pop is akin to 70’s-era Chilton/Twilley, mid-80’s New Zealand guitar pop, L.A.’s Paisley Underground, and 90’s noise pop all blended, mutated, and swirled into their own modern day hook-filled racket. They also remind me of Robyn Hitchcock, The Byrds, and even at times Dot Dash & Skytone.” – Wally
This is a very exciting release for the Beautiful Music label, when you get to release an album by two extremely talented musicians, whose careers you have followed for years. So what happens when you combine the talents of the queen of power pop, Lisa Mychols AKA Ellie, on the sunny west coast of the USA, with the talents of pop maverick, and one of the most productive musicians, across the ocean in Scotland, Paul Ryan, aka Trip, aka SUPER 8? Well let me tell you, it’s the soundtrack of your Summer, The Hit of Summer 2020 and an album you will return to year after year! These Sun-drenched melodies, just conjure up images, of sandy beaches, surf boards, shiny cars, crashing waves and beautiful people. It’s here, a Summer Smash (sort of like Denim‘s Summer Smash, but without the car crash), an album to cherish and love & blast on the car speakers with the roof down. Estella from Fadeaway Radiate, described their single Honey Bee as “a must for lovers of sunshine pop, northern soul and the sound and aesthetics of the 60’s in general. The song is a groovy feel-good tune with lush layers of sprightly harmonies”. The whole album, carries on in a similar theme, and I dare you to get these songs and melodies out of your head, once lodged there. This is what timeless music is made of.
musician, that is just waiting to be discovered. Some may recognize the name as the person behind the wonderful band Play People who first recorded two EP’s on the brilliant This Almighty Pop! label run by a person with impeccable taste, Stephen Maughan (of Bulldozer Crash, Kosmonaut and The Memory Fades) and a 7” single on another highly regarded label Cloudberry Records (run by Roque Ruiz, who is one of the most knowledgeable people in the indie pop world). So already with a pedigree like that, you know it is going to be excellent and we are immensely proud to have it as a Beautiful Music release.
there appears to be quite a lot more going on in the music of these songs and Lloyd isn’t that easily pigeonholed. The release starts off with “Lost & Lonely” in a beautiful, meandering, dreamy Beatles influenced song with hints of “Strawberry Fields Forever” and then picks up a bit with some mid 70’s soft rock / easy listening, lounge moods sneaking in, but it’s Lloyd’s vocals that tear at your heartstrings but inspire hope when he sings lines like “leave me down here on my own” & “the suns coming up”. However, it’s what follows, the amazing “OXFORD Guitar Club” with its hints of New Order meets The Jazz Butcher, with a bit of an Altered Images guitar feel that really hooked us. We won’t give our impressions on all the songs, as we would prefer you make your own, but suffice to say Lloyd keeps that beautiful momentum going all the way through these songs. This is a brilliant mini LP/EP, in our opinion, but we prefer you made your own opinions.
Just who are The Irony Board & why have we not heard of them before? Information about the band is quite scarce, but we do know that they had a song featured on one of Firestation Records legendary “The Sound Of Leamington Spa” series (Volume 7), which in itself automatically gives them some street cred., as Firestation Records are certainly one of the purveyors of great taste in this modern era. We also know that a published novel, “Capturing The Wry”, was written about the band, this book written by John Hartley (aka Johny Nocash) chronicles the crazy and fascinating story of the trials and tribulations of his unsigned band The Irony Board. That book, which is highly recommended, was endorsed by Merric Davidson (editor of Toppermost.co.uk) and Steve Williamson (EIO40 kingpin), and several members of the Trash Can Sinatras, making this story even more intriguing. Initial copies of the book were accompanied by a free bonus CD, of studio recordings, of the tracks featured within the book. That however is just the tip of the iceberg.
As we get back in action, we have a brand new album to be released on our label in May, which I’m very excited about, it’s an album by James Clarke Five, the latest project by James Hughes (AKA Clarke), an amazing musician who played in the short lived, but very talented 80’s Liverpool band, 
We can however confirm that new music is in the works and judging from this latest single “End Of The Summer”, a beautiful and languid delight of hooks and harmonies, we can confidently say that there must be some humans behind this project and without a doubt, you are going to love their new album. Listen to “End Of The Summer” on their Bandcamp page.
