Flowers – Everybody's Dying to Meet You

It takes just under 30 seconds for Flowers’ second album Everybody’s Dying to Meet You to vault its promising but wan predecessor (2014’s Do What You Want To, It’s What You Should Do). That’s the moment the chiming, bright-as-a-button guitars of opener Pull My Arm get abruptly roughed up by a thick wedge of distortion, instilling the London trio’s sound with a forcefulness and grit that was conspicuously missing last time round.

Set against this bedrock of fuzz and feedback, singer Rachel Kenedy’s light, lofty vocals sparkle all the more clearly – a contrast that proves particularly striking on tracks like How Do You Do’s noisy dreampop and slow-burn closer Bathroom Sink. The sugared melodies of Bitter Pill also go down smoothly, as does the lucently beautiful Intrusive Thoughts, and though a distracting feeling of déjà vu eventually takes root, the well-pruned runtime helps keep Flowers more or less in full bloom.