Fruits & Flowers

Gabys, The

s/t

Fruits & Flowers

The Gabys are an almost totally anonymous UK duo. They came to Fruits & Flower's attention via the ALL GONE tape label out of Detroit, who are always fishing around for sub-Xpressway lo-fi music. Lovely summery vocals are almost totally obscured by thick guitar chords and a distant throb that might be a floor tom, but it’s not clear. Immediately thoughts arose of The Garbage & the Flowers with their early VU-demo stylings and SF’s own April Magazine in hiss-drenched strum mode. If that sounds up one's alley, this EP brings four tracks of delightedly wasted pop for a listless afternoon.

Telephone Numbers, The

Leviathan

Fruits & Flowers

San Francisco’s music scene has been driven deep underground but is still thriving like crazy, variations on dreamy guitar pop are turning into sold-out tapes and limited vinyl obsessions. Next up is The Telephone Numbers, a band led by SF native Thomas Rubenstein and made up of Inner Richmond neighborhood locals. Rubenstein writes lovely heartfelt songs, equal parts early ‘90s indie pop and ’80s Australian rock, while the band helps supply lush arrangements: 12-string guitars, harmonies, feedback and soaring violin. RIYL The Lemonheads, Teenage Fanclub, The Church.

Bons

Ready Reckoner

Fruits & Flowers

After a year off, Fruits & Flowers is back with something new and a little different. Bons is weirder than the unpopular pop music we usually cover but just as infectious and amazing. Hailing from the UK the members of Bons have been active in various noisy but gentle freeform acts over the years. Here they’ve given us their most “pop” release yet, and there’s nothing quite like it. Some of these wild sounds could slip into the Catsup Plate, Fonal or Geographic catalogs of the ’00s. There’s also a thread through this music via UK art rock, Eno’s pop moments, Woo, even the calmer bits of Camberwell Now. It’s refreshingly mysterious and transports you to the outer buds of dewy branches where a Praying Mantis is lounging with a pair of bright green Beats headphones.

The Oilies

Psychic Dog

Fruits & Flowers

The Oilies is sometimes a band and sometimes just Carly Putnam’s home fried pop music. Carly has done time in the Art Museums, The Mantles, Horrid Red and The Reds, Pinks & Purples but really shines when she pulls out her own poetic pop gems. Combine the subtle creepiness of Rose McDowall with the wistfulness of the Marine Girls and you have a record tailor made for the Fruits & Flowers universe of unpopular pop. Her debut EP was recorded mostly by Carly in her RV parked somewhere in the existential desert and then filtered through Edmund Xavier’s SF lab.

Michael O.

Power's Out

Fruits & Flowers

The songs of Michael “O” Olivares (of The Mantles) get deeper and more beautiful as tears go by. With this new single he is teamed up again with producer Edmund Xavier, and with players from The Mantles and The Oilies, pulling off winding & jangling folk-rock ballads tinged with flecks of art rock and psychedelia. All songs land somewhere between Jacobites, The Pastels and Kevin Ayers for another klassic Fruits & Flowers unpopular pop hit single.

Odd Hope

Odd Hope

Fruits & Flowers

Yes, the genius semi-unknown Odd Hope’s debut album is finally here, bringing an immersive set of anglophile jangle and Midwest gloom. Primarily the work of Oakland’s Tim Tinderholt, aided and abetted by the post punk-ish Edmund Xavier of Horrid Red / Der TPK, this record will feed a Twin Tone / Glass Records mid-eighties fix. There’s something incredibly catchy and vaguely ominous about Tinderholt’s songs that is totally now and crucial. This self-titled debut follows the acclaimed 7-inch Brave & Olde from last year.

Swiftumz

Game Six

Fruits & Flowers

In the Bay Area, Swiftumz is a songwriter’s songwriter, beloved by small pockets of loyal fans, taking elements from the Jesus & Mary Chain and classic Bay Area punk-pop craft but delivering them in a completely personal way. After two albums and some singles, the Game Six 7-inch is a peak for the band.

Odd Hope

Brave And Olde

Fruits & Flowers

***You’ve likely never heard of ODD HOPE or the band's main mind TIM TINDERHOLT, but you’ll dig the cheap pop thrills of his debut single for the unrelenting Fruits & Flowers label. Tim has experimented with various jangle/punk bands for years, literally holed-up in his Oakland garage with worn copies of Alien Lanes and Chairs Missing. He kills time recording on the classic Bay Area archaic recording device of choice, the Tascam 388 (look it up). Brave and Olde is an epic folk-rock ballad via 1980s Glass Records, while the jaunty flipside, "I'll Follow You Soon," could have been ripped from Creation Soup Vol. ????… Join us in the cult of Tim and Odd Hope.

Michael O.

Really?

Fruits & Flowers

***MICHAEL O. (OLIVARES) of beloved Bay Area psych-pop band THE MANTLES has been steadily building songs in his basement in Oakland with the help of HORRID RED’s EDMUND XAVIER for the past few years. The result is this affecting collection of cracked pop hits and tragic ballads. The Mantles are known to lay down a thick electric jangle, but with Michael's solo songs the focus rests on rough-hewn vocal melodies and lyrics, laced with synths, acoustics, clarinet and noises. Really? arrives one year after the release of his Face The Facts single and with it Michael tumbles headfirst into Modern Lovers, Tronics, Kevin Ayers, Jacobites and Tall Dwarfs territory... home recorded & highly personal, but not lo-fi, please.

Piano Movers

Girlfriend’s Lover

Fruits & Flowers

***For the uninformed among you, NODZZZ tore up the West Coast in the late ‘00s; their pithy debut single “I Don’t Wanna (Smoke Marijuana)” was an underground hit if such a thing exists, while their second nearly posthumous LP Innings (Woodsist) with its heavier lyrics and lyrical guitars is an unheralded pop classic. Frontman ANTHONY ATLAS relocated to his native East Coast and began collaborating with drummer PETER HILTON and lead guitarist SEAN MONAGHAN on a band called PIANO MOVERS. For us Piano Movers belongs in the lineage of musicians who tuck in their shirts and wear glasses: The Feelies, The Embarassment and any number of angular pop bands haunting Athens, Georgia in the early '80s. While the Nodzzz neurotic energy and humor is intact, Piano Movers sound and content is more three dimensional, their debut single gorgeously captured in a hi-fi setting by JARVIS T. from Woods.

Dick Diver

New Name Blues

Fruits & Flowers

***Up next for Fruits & Flowers is a 7" single by Australia's DICK DIVER… yes it's an odd name for a pop band (an F. Scott Fitzgerald Tender is the Night reference if you were curious), but this is top notch pop music. Their Calendar Days LP from last year is for us one of the best records in a long long time. If you crave a dusky melancholy twang in your ears, that striped sunlight sound, you have to get on board here. Let's casually throw out some names: Cannanes, Gobetweens, Apartments, or maybe some Pavement or Modern Lovers. In any case Dick Diver has blessed Fruits & Flowers with some lovely tunes; side A is low key pop that careens into a dream zone, and side B is a countrified cover of “Lonely Life” by 1980s Aboriginal band Coloured Stone.

Michael O.

Face The Facts

Fruits & Flowers

***The inaugural offering from Fruits & Flowers is a very special treat. It’s the first solo release by MICHAEL O., aka MICHAEL OLIVARES, the front-man for Bay Area band THE MANTLES, who've made records for Slumberland, Mexican Summer and Siltbreeze amongst others. While The Mantles peel off ragged west coast psych, here Michael O. steps into eccentric pop territory. Working in his basement in Oakland & in SF with EDMUND XAVIER (HORRID RED, etc), Michael O. built a mini-masterpiece of pop with elements of art-rock, new wave & psych-folk, DIY but NOT lo-fi. It’s tempting to add some musical references, but this record is difficult to pin down to a particular era or style. We advise that you just throw this on and get lost in the cracked and glorious world of Michael O. Fans of The Mantles’ paisley hooks will be pleased, but the album is less about heavy guitar riffs than Michael’s distinct voice & melodies which he and Edmund adorned with layers of organs, synths, drum machines and clarinet (!). This 7" EP features two Michael O. originals on side A and a pop take on an early Scorpions tune on the B-side. LP coming soon.