Many bemoan millennials' constantly shifting attention spans, deriding the generation for its inability to focus and complete work. In reality though, this couldn't be further from the truth for Atlanta trio Fake Flowers. Despite the band's broad interests — expansive shoe gaze, jangly guitar pop, jolting post-punk, and splashy surf — their forthcoming Wonder Wave EP represents a fully-intended diverse array of pop songs.
Jacob Chisenhall and Jack Wucher began writing for the EP at the end of 2013, but its six songs weren’t fully realized until the band began following new muses, adding drummer Andy Barton in the spring and summer of 2014. The band recorded and produced the EP themselves, wanting full creative control to experiment with each track on their own time. They then sought out Nathaniel Kiser of Sleeping Partner Studios in Atlanta to mix and Jesse Mangum of The Glow Recording Studio in Athens to master.
Wonder Wave’s six songs symbolize distinct but cohesive universes, each evoking separate worlds of sound and emotion. Within each song, listeners might recognize the influence of a particular artist or genre of music before the next song completely changes the EP’s course, reflecting a style familiar to a period of time some twenty or more years later, still linked though by the instant familiarity and catchiness of pop music.
Aside from this general unity, themes of identity and the ongoing struggles associated with it appear throughout the EP. For all three members, the period of time at which they wrote and recorded Wonder Wave proved to be incredibly tumultuous, with romantic relationships changing and ending, jobs terminating, and living situations falling through. Still, the band carried on, intent on creating a fully realized body of work despite the personal hardships they faced.
Fake Flowers knows it’s necessary to shift its attention, as should all artists. Without doing so, one becomes stagnant and doomed to prolong the routines of old. With Wonder Wave, they hope to share a sliver of their world, with a promise of continued exploration into universes unknown.
Wonder Wave will be released March 24, 2015.