Paisley Shirt has been at the centre of near-everything good that's been happening in San Francisco the past year or two, issuing a slew of limited run cassettes that taken as a whole speak of a wider, overlapping artistic community. It's fitting that their first vinyl release should be the debut-album-proper by Flowertown, the mini-supergroup of Cindy's Karina Gill and Mike Ramos aka Tony Jay and member of April Magazine. Supergroup is a ridiculous term to apply to music made with such modest means (and this is very modest), but there is a certain alchemy between Gill and Ramos that elevates their songs into something more than the sum of their parts. Time Trials, recorded during lockdown and named for the time-dilating reality of enforced isolation, is broadly similar in approach to their first two EPs, but is more confident in its own skin, even when favouring the hushed delivery of Gill's now characteristically intimate vocal. Simply, they've worked out what Flowertown is and how as musicians they best dovetail. I suppose you'd describe this as dreampop, not too dissimilar to early Low or Mazzy Star, though if pushed, i'd say it's mostly Opal that Flowertown reminds me of - that intersection of male/female perspective, suggestive of private worlds just out of reach, finding something profound in the everyday. On a more basic level, Time Trials features Flowertown's best songs to date, still couched in static and resolutely lo-fi, but distinct, memorable, even hook-y at times, and constructed from a wider sonic palette. Strange and inspiring how this kind of thing can come out of the desperately trying and boring circumstances of the past 18 months. The devil's in the ennui, i guess. Edition of 300.
