Review Summary: Silk Flowers has its moments, but mostly meanders in a rut of predictability and sterility.
Silk Flowers are pretty weird. So weird, in fact, that No Age drummer Dean Spunt called them one of the weirdest bands he knew. That's pretty weird. For the most part, the New York based group plays a brand of new wave that wouldn't have sounded out of place in the early 80s, only with a bunch of odd and seemingly random noises overtop. That's pretty weird. Vocalist Aviram Cohen sings in a deep baritone that sounds like an off-key Ian Curtis impression, which would be comical if it wasn't so annoying. If you're starting to notice a trend here, you should be. Silk Flowers are pretty damn weird.
Unfortunately, once you get past the weirdness of
Silk Flowers, there isn't really anything interesting about the album. There are two standout tracks that mercifully do not feature any of Cohen's singing; "Night Shades" is a fairly decent blend of fuzz and synthesizer and "Birds of Passion" is a dreamy track isn’t quite as flashy as "Night Shades", but rather emphasizes atmospheric electronics. But as far as good full length tracks go, that's it really. There are enough infectious melodies spread throughout
Silk Flowers to make you keep listening, but the band's eccentricity too often ruins any buzz they have going. Often times, Cohen's goofy singing style completely kills the flow of the song, no matter how well thought out it is. Both "Flesh the Light" and "Sand" open on a decent, if unoriginal note, with the former incorporating bouncy dance music, while "Sand" focuses on more rhythmic electronic sounds; however, when Cohen's low baritone enters the mix, it completely overshadows the rest of the song to the point where the once infectious melodies are no longer interesting. On the other hand, the middle of
Silk Flowers, particularly tracks like the unbearably tense "Cheap Shot" and the detached sounding "In This Place" are completely directionless and uninteresting songs that do not engage the listener. They're just sort of there, nothing-tracks that meander along on autopilot and filling up time.
The problem with
Silk Flowers is that it sinks into a rut of predictability and sterility extremely quickly. The album opens solidly, coasts along for a few minutes, picks it up for "Night Shades" and then coasts for the better part of four songs, give or take a few brief moments. Sure,
Silk Flowers is kind of weird, but as cool as eccentricity can be, it doesn't help when the vast majority of the record lacks substance. And that is the most unfortunate aspect of
Silk Flowers. Every now and then you can see what the album is trying to accomplish, but it is far too often suffocated by mediocrity.
