(1/26/24) Flower Festival - Age LP (Stinkweeds Variant)

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 3rd 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. “It’s easy to dismiss art we’ve created in a different time- like I hear recording techniques; I hear riffs or instrumentation I wouldn’t do now. But the album came from a new way of engaging with art that really freed me, a peace about where I was at both of those times in my life.”  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”.