In the week leading up to its July 8 release, fans can listen to The Avalanches’ Wildflower (Astralwerks) exclusively at AppleMusic.com/TheAvalanches. Those who pre-order Wildflower on iTunes will instantly receive the first single, “Frankie Sinatra” featuring Danny Brown and MF Doom, plus “Subways” and “Colours.”
Wildflower– the follow-up to the influential Australian band’s 2000 debut album, Since I Left You –is like The Beach Boys’ Smile re-imagined in the Daisy Age: a mind-bending cartoon road movie that’s best viewed with closed eyes and an open mind. The band’s core duo – Robbie Chater and Tony Di Blasi -constructed Wildflower from woozy harmonics, infectious rhythm tracks and archival field recordings and, for the first time, called on like-minded guest vocalists and collaborators to contribute.
In an album review, Rolling Stone observed, “the Avalanches’ sweetly nostalgic vibe sets them apart.” “So how does it sound?” asked TheVerge.com when “Frankie Sinatra” premiered. “Well, it sounds like The Avalanches (plus little dashes of Danny Brown and MF Doom): playful, zany, a little dusty, drunk on music’s possibility.” “Colours” featuring Jonathan Donahue of Mercury Rev on vocals was named “Best New Track” by Pitchfork upon its release.Other collaborators on Wildflower include Camp Lo, Toro y Moi, Jonti Danimals, Biz Markie, Jennifer Herrema (Royal Trux), Warren Ellis (Dirty Three, the Bad Seeds), Father John Misty, psych-poet David Berman, orchestrator Jean Michel-Bernard (The Science of Sleep) and long-time live accomplice James Dela Cruz.
Like Since I Left You, which placed in the top 10 of Pitchfork’s Top 200 Albums of the 2000s, Wildflower sits on a patchwork of samples drawn from a variety of eras, cultures and genres. SPIN noted, “‘Subways’…is easily the closest to the Avs’ classic sound, with sweeping strings, ecstatic vocals, and finely-chopped samples of the likes of the Bar-Kays and Chandra.”FADER hailed the track as “a danceable return to classic form for the group.”
“We see Wildflower as a celebration of the ‘little things,’ of the beauty in the oft-unnoticed and overlooked,” explains Robbie Chater. Adds Tony Di Blasi, “To me, a wildflower is a person – a free spirit, unrestrained by conventionality. They have haven’t lost that innate curiosity and lust for life.”
Left to right: Tony Di Blasi, Robbie Chater, James Dela Cruz Photo Credit: Steve Gullick
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