Music is meant to make you feel something. Whether it is delicate and eloquent or hard and overbearing; the combination of sounds is meant for you to absorb and feel in whatever way you need to feel it at the moment. Our recent discovery Flowers For Juno will get deep into your mind and soul with their newest single “My Bloody Kisses.”
The project from the mind of vocalist/producer Benjó James is not looking to share polished pop with us. Flowers For Juno lands in the shoegaze realm but with a darker vibe that bleeds under layers of fuzz. The influences of bands like Type O Negative and My Bloody Valentine are abundantly obvious. The raw soundscape covers the hooks letting the music seep into your psyche without explanation.
Newest single “My Bloody Kisses” is three-and-a-half minutes of pure, unfiltered longing soaked in reverb, distortion, and the unmistakable ache of someone who buries their feelings deep inside. The title alone is a not too subtle wink at influences Type O Negative (their seminal album being “Bloody Kisses”) and My Bloody Valentine.
It opens with a detuned guitar buzz that feels like waking up in someone else’s bed with lipstick on your neck you don’t remember earning. The drums crash in an almost underwater way while tough to decipher vocals slither through the mix like smoke under a door. Secrets whispered directly into your bloodstream.
The production is gloriously scuzzy. Guitars swell and collapse like tidal waves made of pooled blood and razor blades. The wall-of-noise payoff that demands repeat listens just to experience that feeling again.
This isn’t reinventing gothic shoegaze; it’s perfecting the parts that made you fall in love with them in the first place: the haze, the heartbreak, the sense that beauty and pain are just two sides of the same overdriven signal. Flowers For Juno has given us a song that you will put on repeat when you want to feel dangerous and delicate at the same time.
