Live Review: PREMIERE: Flower Drums '28 Mansions' EP

Perth four piece, FLOWER DRUMS, are bringing their nostalgic West Coast sound to venues around the country with a national tour, showcasing tracks from their new EP, 28 Mansions, which is out this Friday! And we're stoked to be PREMIERING the independently released EP right now! Underneath its bluesy downtrodden feel, you'll find a set of five well-balanced pop songs.

Much like FKA Twigs’ sultry buttery beats, Flower Drums are in no rush. They slowly yet consistently build and create a chasm of warm beatific noise into which you fall. Dreamy, hazy, full of wanderlust are the kinds of things you’d throw about when describing Flower Drums’ sound.

They performed at last year’s Laneway festival and notched up plays on Triple J, and the EP tour signals another step up in terms of the band’s precedence. Overall the mix fuses together pretty effortlessly; listening to it, you lose track of where one song starts and finishes. They mesh into one another like a rolling stream of warm autumnal winds floating across an endless vista of golden cornfields. Or something like that.

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'Bad Websites' opens the five track EP – it’s indicative of frontman Leigh Craft’s soft crooning in that you often can’t fully work out what he’s saying but you know it’s something pleasant. His relaxed tone shapes the band’s sound; it’s clean cut and inoffensive, yet this shouldn’t take away any of the appeal – the familiar, willowy murmurs are a welcome down tempo addition to the field of electronic beats.

'Don’t Wait' gives us a duet between Craft and the female vocals of St. South, which can only be described as lush. The band describe 'End II End' as their take on a future soul remix – it’s not dissimilar to the sound of Future Classic’s PANAMA, and for me this midway track sums up the smooth electronica of the EP as a whole.

Penultimate track 'ATS' is a slow murky back burner which drops into a sub-marine abyss like Rhye’s ‘Open’. 28 Mansions closes with 'Walking At Night', the track on which we eventually hear a more indie pop and guitar influence. There’s a smidge of sass and attitude about it, which shows the band’s confidence hidden beneath their humility and wistful sound.