The Flowers of Hell
Come Hell or High Water
With half of the band based in London and the rest of in Toronto, the Flowers Of Hell are a trans-Atlantic space rock orchestra, a modern big band. Made up of 16 give or take experimental musicians, they mix orchestral and rock instrumentation mainly creating wordless pieces that explore the meeting points of classical and blues-based music. Their name comes from the old blues ideal that the pleasure of the listener is born from the misery & toil of the musician. Their second album Come Hell Or High Water is out for US release, but was released elsewhere in 2009. It took a full year of work and involved recording 30 musicians in over 40 sessions that they pulled together in London, Toronto, Prague, Detroit, & Abilene, Texas. The man behind it is founder and ringleader Greg Jarvis, and members of Broken Social Scene, the Patti Smith Group, Spiritualized, Guided by Voices, Bat for Lashes, British Sea Power and Spacemen 3 contribute to this enormous band. Greg Jarvis looks at each composition as a way to experiment with sound and vision.
“Opus 66 (Part I)” is a slow builder, starting off as a western with melodica before transforming into a big sound with strings, brass and bombastic percussion. The following track “Bluemchen” Starts off carefully with strings and piano, atmospheric with a young female german voice as a film score before marching into shoegazing Post-Rock territory. “Forest of Noise” has a soft curious opening, and then plays out as the background music of your worst nightmare in outer space. “The Strength Of String” brings it all down, like the wind sweeping a post-apocalyptic landscape, leading into “Darklands,” a more conventional song that climaxes into guitar feedback and fuzz. A highlight of the album is “The Invocation,” starting off as a middle eastern sounding tune, with Arabic and Asian influences before turning huge and dramatic, just to calm down again like after the rain and the storm has passed. Album closer “Occasional Tears” is a touching moment with solitary piano and lush strings, beautiful orchestrated.
And that is a trademark of this album; an ambitious balance between orchestral instrumentation, electronica and synesthesia, tender moments and big bombastic wall of sound. The variety blows you away, but their proggy approach to music sometimes makes your ears tired. You could call it Visual Post-Rock.
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