Flower Festival

***While the idea of an album being born of finding peace with oneself is nothing new, in Micah Dailey’s hands it’s a beautifully symbolic harmonizing of past and present. Beginning with an instrumental opening, Flower Festival’s latest album Age offers up an invitation to tilt your ears between jittery analog texture and elegantly fluid drumbeats. But it’s the inward-looking songwriting that makes the best case for Flower Festival’s relatability from his professions of self-hatred to an overall detachment from common culture. Flower Festival’s third full-length album was written at two significantly different times in Micah Dailey’s life, taking music recorded over 8 years ago, revisited and finished with lyrics written today. Much of the album’s influence came from a newfound peace and appreciation for his upbringing. Having grown up in the Middle East, Micah moved back to Arizona in 2011 where an internal tug-of-war rooted in guilt and inadequacies made for some significantly self-deprecating songwriting, as you might imagine being that his album at the time was entitled “Cry Baby”. The push and pull of this mindset made Flower Festival’s album full of artistic parallels that marry the new and the old, without forcing the two. Becoming a father and husband, Micah’s way of living-room-recording had to be adjusted as well, getting to a point of contentment that there might never be a moment of complete quiet, but embracing that there may be faint samples of kids playing or guests chatting. Having created an album in a way that both embraced and let go of significant restraints, a reconciliation derived from Flower Festival’s examination of his artistic ego. Thankfully, Flower Festival’s way of creating art lent itself to a freedom found only when the external and internal pressures of making music “the right way” have all but gone- and from it came an album that was worth waiting for. Mixed and mastered (along with contributions) by the incredible John Dieterich (of Deerhoof), and features other collaborations with Nicholas Krgovich, Qais Essar, Lonna Kelley (Giant Sand) and Michael Krassner (of Califone and Boxhead Ensemble).