“spindle-pricked magic” MOJO

“White Flowers manage to beautify and industrialize an incredible sound with a bleak and foggy romanticism” Loud & Quiet

“transcendent dream-pop” The Line of Best Fit

Preston duo White Flowers - AKA Katie Drew and Joey Cobb - release second album Dreams For Somebody Else, out May 1st via The state51 Conspiracy. The album is supported by an ongoing instore tour, with headline dates coming later in the year - full schedule below.

Dreams For Somebody Else came together via a circuitous, yet intentional process. For a decade, Drew and Cobb have enacted a dedicated archival and diaristic practice - storing snatches of musical and artistic ideas across hard drives and physical mediums. These fragments formed a primordial soup via which the 10 tracks that make up the LP have since coalesced.  

The two-piece embrace ‘sad euphoria’ - a palette starting from their well-established dream-pop sound, whilst adding the cathartic elements from dance music. The result is an album not backward in coming forward regarding its pop-sensibilities.

Alongside the sparks of inspiration that came from revisiting old ideas in their ‘sketchbook approach’, there are external influences that have helped drive the narrative. As they explain:

"Whilst recording the songs for ‘Dreams For Somebody Else’, we really connected with the concept of Annie Ernaux’s book, ‘The Years’ - a ‘collective autobiography’ pieced together from mismatched fragments from her past, conjuring the effect that she’s merely an observer of her own life. This concept merges into the White Flowers world, where time, rather than being restrictive, is fluid and boundless, with our music existing as an endless conversation with versions of ourselves at different stages of our lives.”

As such, they say their work belongs to no specific time period, it does land in an increasingly dystopian era, which they theorise has fuelled a collective desire to dance.

"You start realising how important music and art are to your sanity,” Drew says, “It is escapism from the world, and physically dancing, physically being at a gig and moving can be so cathartic.”

The record sees them delve into trance, harnessing sequences that spin round and round in a hypnotic state of melancholy. Throughout, they play with the traditional structures of dance music through a series of repetitive hooks – “things to dwell on”, as Cobb puts it.

The genesis of any work in the White Flowers world (or “realm”, as they coin it) begins with the duo’s own creativity, before opening this up fills in the detail. Namely on Dreams For Somebody Else this came from working with Al Doyle of LCD Soundsystem on co-production - a serendipitous link-up given the profound effect a 2017 LCD set at Primavera had on the two-piece’s outlook. 

In another sliding-doors moment, as the grind of immediate post-pandemic touring was close to taking a crippling toll, the offer to join one of their favourite bands Beach House on tour came in - a sign to persevere. This perseverance has been rewarded with what feels like their most complete work yet - a holistic structure built from ephemeral foundations, couching themes of isolation, dissociation and identity in trance indebted rapture. Sad euphoria, indeed.

White Flowers is

Katie Drew and Joey Cobb

-their Dreams For Somebody Else album is out May 1st via The state51 Conspiracy. ‘Heart Breaks’ is out now.

White Flowers Online

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Live Dates

29.04 Rough Trade, Nottingham

01.05 Action Records, Preston

02.05 Rough Trade, Liverpool

04.05 Jumbo Records, Leeds

06.05 Banquet Records, Kingston

07.05 Rough Trade, Bristol

30.09 The Croft, Bristol 

01.10 Alphabet, Brighton

02.10 The ICA, London

08.10 Stereo, Glasgow

09.10 The Trades Club, Hebden Bridge

10.10 Yes (Pink Room), Manchester