Download: Silk Flowers “Flash Of Light”

(from Silk Flowers out now on PPM)

New York City’s Silk Flowers’ debut self-titled album is coming out on PPM, though they have much in common with the artists on L.A.’s Human Ear Music—from their stripped-down synth sound to their obvious debt to post-punk. Silk Flowers is certainly a hip, smart album perfect for night drives through Echo Park. However, it doesn’t go too far beyond being an aesthetically pleasing collection of songs with consistent production. Taking pages from similar bands, Silk Flowers uses pieces of the contemporary underground-hipster-pop puzzle—like vintage-sounding, oscillator-equipped synthesizers, reverb-heavy drum machine beats, and the now-all-too-ubiquitous Ian Curtis vocals, which Silk Flowers singer Aviram Cohen nails though Interpol and its clones did them to death five years ago. To its credit, Silk Flowers is a smooth, coherent album, and every once in a while a song does pop out from the others. “In This Place” is a haunting piano-and-tambourine ballad with Oriental overtones, “Cheap Shot” breaks the mold with Furious Pig-style vocals, and “Costume” hearkens back to playful, gleefully oddball new wave bands like Our Daughters Wedding. Silk Flowers show definite skill, finesse, and potential—perhaps with some more time and experimentation, the band will come into its own and develop a more distinctive sound. Meanwhile, its eponymous LP can be classified as an enjoyable, mood-setting piece of work.

—Regina Cherene