Tina Sandwich – pressing flowers
After a big summer of festivals including TRNSMT and Kelburn Garden Party, Tilly O’Connor and pals, aka Tina Sandwich, return with an excellent EP
Arriving in the midst of autumn, pressing flowers feels like a little piece of summer living on. Doused in sunlight, dripping with guitars and drenched in girlhood nostalgia, this feels like Tina Sandwich supersized, bigger and brighter than before.
pressing flowers makes you want to hit the rewind button back to summer. With wistful notes of living seasonally, and coming to terms with the cycle of life from birth to rot, the collection feels woven together like a flower crown: delicate in places, unruly in others. With the most exciting parts of the EP holding the duality just right, tracks like dandelion pair endless summer vibes with the cyclical strangeness of déjà vu.
Beneath the sweet vocals, there’s something a little darker in the lyricism as the EP swings between beauty and gore. That tension is captured in sunhoney, a song born out of fairy pools and decaying meat, which feels like pitting magic against mortality. While the EP is sun-soaked, it also makes room for eclipse; built to rot feels grittier both musically and in subject matter as it feels rooted in ideas of missingness and generational trauma.
pressing flowers might have been the perfect soundtrack to the summer just passed, but perhaps there’s something more interesting in releasing it as the cold creeps in. Tina Sandwich is letting us hold onto the golden summer warmth, while making room for the darkness (literally and metaphorically) as the nights draw in.
Listen to: sunhoney, dandelion