By the band’s personal admission, Sunflower Bean was at a crossroads within the months main as much as the recording of its sensible new LP, Mortal Primetime (Fortunate Quantity). Native New Yorkers Julia Cumming, Nick Kivlin and Olive Faber have been youngsters once they launched their 2016 debut, Human Ceremony, laying out a garagey indie-pop template that might evolve even additional on 2020’s Twentytwo In Blue. Two years later, Headful Of Sugar—an exhilarating foray right into a gritty, danceable city headspace—left followers questioning the place the trio would go subsequent. Seems the band wasn’t positive both.
The members of Sunflower Bean have emerged from their current bout of soul-searching as a streamlined, arena-ready unit with sufficient self-confidence to supply themselves—and to know when the monster riffs that consumed 2024’s Shake EP weren’t sustainable for a complete album. Mortal Primetime proves that subtlety and restraint can rock simply as onerous.
MAGNET’s Hobart Rowland reached out to Cumming for particulars on Sunflower Bean’s transformation. Discover out extra on the most recent MAGNET Classics Podcast.
It’s been three years between albums for Sunflower Bean. Give us a rundown of what’s been occurring in everybody’s lives over that point?
Every part and nothing in any respect. Isn’t it bizarre how that occurs? I believe all of us grew up … lots. Nick moved to Los Angeles, Olive began her personal band, and I went on some fairly intense journeys as a author and an individual. We’d all been in Sunflower Bean since we have been late youngsters and by no means knew the rest apart from our lives within the band. We’d reached an deadlock of inventive confusion, and we needed to let go for some time. Getting some house gave us the prospect to search out our synergy once more, and the concepts for this file began to seem—one thing pure, one thing tangible, one thing that appeared like how we felt within the room collectively, letting our devices discover chemistry collectively once more. We knew that might set us free from any of our fears, as a result of it will be so genuine to us.
Headful Of Sugar dabbled in an array of types, however Mortal Primetime takes a reasonably agency rock stance. What’s behind this extra retro-focused sound?
We’ve at all times liked music from the previous, particularly riffs that evoke the sensation of enviornment rock. As followers of rock from so many various eras, it felt actually good to only benefit from the “huge” expertise of the sound. It’s additionally been cool to be on this journey collectively. We’ve at all times been actually artistically free and created work that excited us at the moment—like once we wrote Headful Of Sugar. It confirmed us the way to discover whereas additionally main us again dwelling.
Why did the band determine to self-produce the brand new album?
We’d began self-producing on Shake, which gave us an enormous probability to develop as artists and stand behind our concepts. We needed to construct that belief with ourselves and to face our fears of asking others within the room for validation. The work can be very private, and I believe self-producing helped us get nearer to our concepts and shield them. None of this implies we don’t need to work with producers once more. We’re extraordinarily grateful for the experiences we’ve had. We realized a lot from the producers we’ve labored with, and it’s a really intense expertise you go on collectively. We simply had our personal synergy round this file, and that gave us the boldness to attempt it.
What was the songwriting course of like for Mortal Primetime?
Throughout Headful, we have been impressed by the music taking place at that second—and COVID-era manufacturing, which needed to be accomplished remotely. For Mortal Primetime, we have been capable of focus extra on how the songs made us really feel within the room collectively, reasonably than what the songs ought to imply in a cultural sense.
Sunflower Bean has been via so many evolutions over the previous 10 years. Is there any new territory left unexplored?
All the time. I can’t inform you what the best way ahead seems like, however I do know will probably be constructed brick by brick, stuffed with each element we’ve realized on this journey. It’s going to solely get deeper. I can’t look ahead to the brand new territories we will go to and the journeys we create collectively—as a result of I do know they’ll be actual.
See Sunflower Bean reside.
