Night Flowers - 'Fortune Teller' Album Review

Tracklist:

1. Night Train 2. Lotta Love 3. Merry-Go-Round 4. Perfect Storm 5. Fortune Teller 6. Carry On 7. I've Loved You (Such a Long Time) 8. No Coming Down

“Fortune Teller” is the forthcoming album from Night Flowers, a 5 piece who have, in their short lifetime, played the likes of Bestival, Kendal Calling, Lemonpop and Madrid Popfest whilst simultaneously gathering airplay and praise from Steve Lamacq, Radcliffe and Maconie and Sean Keaveney. Sadly there wasn’t any blurb with this one, so whilst I can tell you that the band comprises Sophia Pettit, Greg Ullyart, Sam Lenthall, Zebedee Budworth and Chris Hardy…I can’t tell you what each of them does in the band, but I can tell you about the album! (Sorry, I apologise profusely for that last sentence…I’ve been car sharing with someone who listens to commercial radio and I rather fear it’s rubbing off).

The album may only be 8 songs and 27 minutes long, but it packs a lot into that short space of time. There are some fantastic songs here – “Lotta Love”, “I’ve Loved You (Such A Long Time)” and “Merry-Go-Round” have a gloriously shimmering Indie/Pop feel to them, while title track and current single “Fortune Teller” combines Sophia’s (well, I’m surmising that it’s Sophia) gorgeous voice with guitars in a way that takes you back to ’97 and the heyday of The Sundays. And it’s not just The Sundays you’re reminded of – there are the perfect Pop sensibilities that remind you of Saint Etienne in there too. These are not copies of parodies of what’s gone before, but rather a reminder; the songs are so good that they take you back to the feelings you had when you first heard the likes of “So Tough” and “Static and Silence” – a hint of nostalgia but very firmly of this time.

“Perfect Storm” provides a nice change of pace; it has more of a Folk feel to it and sounds almost like a demo with it’s stripped down vocal and guitar pairing while album closer “No Coming Down” is the perfect kind of last track in that it leaves you wanting more.

Is it ground breaking in anyway? No - by those terms it’s nothing to write home about (which I wouldn’t do anyway, since I’m already here, so it would be a frightful waste of a stamp and, anyway, it’s raining so I’m not going out). But if what you’re looking for is an album that is easy to listen to, puts a smile on your face and is one that you won’t mind returning to again and again, then “Fortune Teller” should definitely find it’s way onto your shelf/mobile-device-library-cataloguing system.