SUNFLO’ER - Straight to V.H.S.
Words and graphics by: Tom Wilson @thetomwilsonexperiment - Sense Music Media | Thursday 6th October 2022
Press photo by: Erin Farrell
New York’s SUNFLO’ER Are In Full Bloom
Caustic, sneering punk from New York, SUNFLO’ER have unleashed their latest full-length All These Darlings and Now Me. We normally chat one-on-one with whoever bands offer up as spokesperson, but there’s a lot to cover here, so we threw caution to the wind and interviewed the entire fucking band. And it’s awesome. Who would they pick for a punk supergroup? Who hates HELMET? And who is desperate to beat Eden Ring? Find out here!
You’ve said in press materials that a lot of this album was created remotely. What impact do you think COVID and the lockdowns had on the way people create music? And how did you try to keep sane during the first few months?
Ethan: I think it’s probably a toss-up. Being cut off from our community and friends was really an eye-opening experience. We’ve been playing music for so long that I really couldn’t envision a world where we couldn’t do it anymore. Now I know that it’s temporary and I should just enjoy it while I can because at any moment it might disappear again. That’s a little dramatic, but I don’t think it’s far off, either. For us, I think we’ve made the best music we ever have. That wouldn’t have been possible if circumstances were anything other than what they were. Rather than change the way people make music (because in a digital age, it’s easier than ever to share across distances in an instant), I hope that it has given all of us in this DIY world a new perspective and a new respect for what it takes to make it work. When we were first told to stay home, I really thought it would be a period of incredible creative output and focus. I was working on collages and poems and felt like I had a pretty decent start on some of it, and then it dried up all at once. I didn’t realize how much traveling and seeing our music friends was a factor in my creative process. So all of my energy went into making this music with people who could hold me accountable.
Jeff: I think some people couldn’t really adapt to that for a group setting, but it also seems like others thrived. As far as that initial lockdown period, I was working 5-6 days a week before everything went down; I work on the road so I was incredibly burnt out and questioning whether I wanted to keep going up until I got a three-month vacation. [Laughs]
Jim: Lockdowns definitely forced more people to take a digital approach with everything really – working on and putting music out. So I think moving forward there will be more music created in a remote way as well as being created with visuals in mind. Whether that be visual performance ideas or video ideas depends on each band, I guess. My job couldn’t go remote so I tried my best to just stay optimistic that it would be over sooner than later.
The production on All These Darlings and Now Me is superb, and the drums sound amazing. How did you approach the production of this album? What ideas did you have going in for how you wanted it to sound?
Ethan: Whenever we go into pre-production for a record, we always share with the engineer the kind of music that we’ve been listening to. For me, that was II by CURSED and Radical by ETID. CURSED obviously has a raw sound but it is enormous, whereas Radical does sound more polished, but I think is the band at their absolute peak. I wanted something that bridged the gap. Urian Hackney is a drummer first and foremost, and his perspective is very much “drums first and we build the sound from there.” There’s a lot of records I love where the drums sound like shit and the record suffers as a result, so, you know, selfishly, I agreed with him. He set me up with a Q Copper kit and Black Beauty snare that just sounded out of this fucking world – huge and bright. This was also the first time in our lives where we really had the time and money to spend on adding additional layers. We always double-tracked guitars, but this time we messed around with some handclaps, tambourine, organ, and piano to add some extra flavour to the mix that keeps the music interesting and lush. Additionally, we really wanted our buddy Matt Sager (LIKE LIONS, BECOMING A GHOST) to add his voice to the final track and his contribution just puts this emotional crescendo at the end of the record.
Jim: As far as my bass goes. I really wanted to approach my bass parts in a way that fills in the role of bass and kind of rhythm guitar. I started using pedals for the first time, using some overdrive to help glue together my parts more to Carter’s guitar parts and sound. I was initially planning on just recording through direct input like I’ve done in the past, but Urian hooked me up with a Fender Bassman amp head and cab. I think that really helped bring out the raw sound that we’ve always gone for. We also recorded a direct input signal for the option to blend it with the mic’d cab sound. But I’m not sure if that was used or not.
Carter: Over our three albums we have progressively wanted to sound less and less like a metal band. We obviously still check many of those boxes but Urian was very on board with this "not metal" approach. He actually suggested a Marshall 50-watt head (I think) and this huge cab filled with 10-inch speakers (I think) for the main guitar tone. It sounded like blown out CHEAP TRICK or STOOGES and was cool as hell. That said, in the end we ended up getting most of the tone from a Soldano head and GCI Onslaught with the gain rolled all the way back. This setup was more appropriate in the long run, but I can't get that noisy ass Marshall rig out of my head.
Jeff: I am a vocalist and don’t need to worry about this stuff.
What can you tell me about the process of writing the lyrics on this album? Which songs came easiest? Which were more challenging?
Ethan: We all contributed lyrics and snippets to the songs, and Jeff was able to see through the mess of this shared document and piece it together in a very cohesive way. I kind of have a one-track mind, so when I get into a writing mode, I tend to write about the same things over and over again. This time, that was coming to terms with my dad dying. There were very few instances where I wrote something where I envisioned a song it could be attributed to. The exceptions are on Cryptfucker and All These Darlings and Now Me. We had been having kind of a difficult time filling in lyrics for those songs and I remember distinctly discovering the term “granite fields” as a synonym for a cemetery, and knowing right away that would be our opening. The melodic singing at the end of the title track was written specifically to fit that meter, but I never intended for them to stay – it just happened to be something that really resonated with everyone else. The entire first half of the song was just a big fucking question mark. I was watching television one night and I got to thinking about the opportunity of seeing my dad again; what would I give up for a few minutes more? I wrote most of the rest of the lyrics in under ten minutes and told Jeff “I don’t know how this fits, but this is the beginning of the song.” It was very cathartic. Nothing I’ve ever written has given me an opportunity to move on but this helped in ways I couldn’t have anticipated.
Jeff: Ethan did a great job of explaining that process of grafting together ideas; as far as easiest vs hardest song, I’m pretty sure Straight to VHS was finalised before we even played it as a band, while 7 Trumpets in Astoria was finished a week before recording when Ethan and I were six beers deep and Some Day You Will Control the Birds was finished in the studio.
If you could build a supergroup of hardcore, who would you pick, and why?
Jeff: okay so hear me out…
Jamey Jasta from HATEBREED, Immortal Technique, and Fred Schneider from THE B-52’S all on vocals
Wata from BORIS on guitar, Josh Scogin on other guitar, whoever wrote the riffs on The Process Of by TURMOIL on yet another guitar
Bass has gotta be Page Hamilton – Ethan hates HELMET
We’ll put Ethan on drums, but he has to use Lars Ulrich’s kit featured in Some Kind Of Monster.
Everyone that likes sass music (i.e. BLOOD BROTHERS, SEEYOUSPACECOWBOY) will love this band, they will overtake THE CALLOUS DAOBOYS as the band with the least amount of room on stage per member, and Ethan will more than likely be in a hell of my creation so I feel really good about that.
Ethan: Nick Yacyshyn on drums, Kurt Ballou on guitar, Liam Wilson on bass, Al Brown on vocals. I don’t know if it would all work together, but in a perfect world, it’s the best band. They’re my absolute favourite musicians on their respective instruments and I think have really pushed the genre in ways that cannot be understated.
Jim: Gonna have to go a weird route on this one. Early PRIMUS Les Claypool on bass. Wes Borland on guitar. Love the almost punk and sometimes metal feel of early PRIMUS, and always thought that combined with Wes Borland’s interesting guitar style could make for some really cool/weird heavy music. Maybe throw in Mike Patton on vocals to bring out the weird and heavy parts. Don’t really have a drummer in mind for this. Might have to go with Tim Alexander from PRIMUS just cause those first couple records had a punk/metal feel partly because of the drumming on them.
Carter: Dustie Waring on guitar – I'm convinced Dustie wrote all of BTBAM's most slammin' riffs, and has the best solos. I'm certain he has a folder of unused knuckle-dragging riffs that need to see the light of day.
Jenny Lee Lindberg – bass. So, WARPAINT is not a hardcore band but Jenny kicks ass and I feel like she'd be down if the tunes were compelling.
Tyler Coburn – drums. Sorry Tyler, you're too fuckin sick and need to play in another band.
Colin Stetson – saxophone. Yep.
Melanie Mongeon – vocals. Mel is such a talented vocalist, cleans and growls, and her stage presence is awe inspiring. For such a physically small woman she performs in a way that makes her seem three times her size. It's hard to explain. You have to see it.
Carter Jones – guitar two. Okay, I wanna play in this band now.
How did Jeff come to join the band? And how did his presence affect how SUNFLO’ER creates music?
Carter: I met Jeff in either the MySpace Revival or Mathcore Index Facebook groups around 2016. Then I saw he played in a band near Syracuse and booked them for a Potsdam show since bands are in short supply this far upstate. After that we asked him to do photos on tour with us in 2019 and he would guest on a few songs each night. He was such a natural fit, it was hard to ignore. Having Jeff bear the majority of vocals has helped us focus on pushing our limits on our respective instruments. The cadence and placement of the lyrics is so nuanced and we never could have accomplished vocally what Jeff did on this record if we were still a trio. He even wrote one of the guitar riffs in Cryptfucker!
Jeff: They just kind of asked me during the middle of lockdown, on my birthday. [Laughs]
Ethan: After Jeff got a SUNFLO’ER tattoo on his knees, we couldn’t very well keep him out of the band, could we? We just got along instantly. He has elevated our music in a way in which we were previously incapable. He’ll contend that our last record is better because he’s a fan of it, but he’s wrong. The energy he brought to the set when doing guest vocals on that first tour was undeniable, and it just felt good to play as a quartet. I should also note that our trailer broke down on our first tour date and he secured a rental van and saved our asses.
Jim: With lockdowns and having just started working on the new album we decided that we had so much time to try out having him on vocals. And if it didn’t work out it wouldn’t matter cause not much was gonna happen for a while. But I’m really glad it did! Jeff brought in some outside ideas and perspectives as a vocalist and fan of ours. Something that we really needed instrumentally. And also having the opportunity to have someone focus on vocals really helped.
The album art is fantastic. What was the concept behind it?
Carter: Jordan Ricks is the artist. He's a great friend from college who did the artwork for all three of our full-lengths. All I can say is we always give Jordan the demos or rough mixes and then just see how he responds visually. I first saw Jordan's work back in 2014 and loved it for how surreal and deliberate his images were. I think Jordan was reading Jung at the time. We were both graduated but working in a college eatery to pay the bills, having lots of long conversations about the nature of inspiration and the creative spirit. I've never asked Jordan about the specific meaning behind any of the work he's done for us. I think it may be as simple as these are the images he sees as he listens to the music.
What are your plans for the rest of the year?
Jim: I’m gonna definitely be working on more videos, for the band and some of my own stuff. Whether those things come out or not, we’ll see. But other than that, I hope to play as much as possible after this tour. Maybe get some new song ideas down sooner than later.
Carter: I just quit my teaching career after some very difficult years so I'm in the process of putting my professional life back together. Writing fat riffs and playing in this band have been a tremendous respite.
It’s a little early, but what do you each want for Christmas?
Jeff: I just want to beat Malenia, Blade of Miquella in Elden Ring.
Carter: I just want Jeff to beat Malenia, Blade of Miquella in Elden Ring.
Jim: Nothing would bring me more joy than to unwrap a digital picture frame with a pre-loaded video of the moment Jeff beats Malenia, Blade of Miquella in Elden Ring. I don’t know what that means, but a happy Jeff makes me happy.
Ethan: I had a really long, heartfelt response about how lucky I am and don’t want anything, but I’ll just agree that I want Jeff to beat Malenia, Blade of Miquella in Elden Ring even though I have no idea what that means.
This isn’t a question, but I wanted to let you know that when I was writing these questions, my 7-year-old daughter took my headphones off, put them on and started jumping around throwing devil horns while listening to Straight to VHS, so if you were wondering how you were tracking in the 7-year-old girl demographic, good news!
Ethan: That’s so sick! Our buddy and de-facto producer, Mike, has a young son who loves our band. Kids don’t lie. When something fuckin rules, they let you know. And when it sucks shit, they walk away and put on Moana (which rules). Punk is for everyone, and I think if kids learn at an early age that you can make music, make art, make whatever, and just have fun while expecting nothing in return, you can have a very fulfilling life.
All These Darlings and Now Me is out now.
