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“The contemplative riffing of Solar Flower’s debut LP illuminates the kaleidoscopic possibilities of heavy music while reframing a love of psychedelia within an authentic context. Despite the ripping guitars, these songs aren’t prosaic rock and roll tales, but neither are they fantastical myths that eschew reality for sci-fi epics or wandering wizards. Instead, Solar Flower pull from the simple wonder of existence to write songs brimming with the essence of life.

Somehow it’s been 10 years since Ty Segall released his first LP, and though the sonic comparisons are apt, to simply file away You Are on a shelf with a slew of heavy psych records would be to miss the point. Solar Flower’s inspiration is less a fetishization of a musical era, and more of a kindredship with the spiritual ideals of the ‘60s. The album is more about community than cavorting, and even though there’s an obvious appreciation for hippie ambitions, the band’s interpretation of them is richer, integrating a love of nature with Eastern philosophy and never reducing any encounters with awakening to simple catchphrases.

While the group began as an excuse for Dorothy Stucki, Sidrah Mahmood, and Rob Sarabia (Dasher, Mutual Jerk) to jam in the hallway of a storage unit, when they added Bo Orr (Arbor Labor Union) to flesh out guitar textures, Solar Flower took on the form found on You Are. Although Orr and Sarabia were more musically experienced than Stucki and Mahmood, it was important to the band that the songwriting was a collaborative, learning experience in which each member contributed equally. Nowhere is this unity of purpose more discernible than on the record’s vocal mix. Instead of relying on any form of lead vocals, the four voices combine to form a single organism which crescendos and decays with an angelic drone.

Beyond confirming the importance of nature and spirituality to humanity’s existence, the band didn’t elaborate much when I inquired about the intersection between the topics and themes found on the record. The open-ended nature of the group’s response mirrors the magic of the album—ritual without dogma, an interpretive journey which allows the listener to overlay the band’s wisdom over their own spiritual experiences. Each track exhibits this freedom in a unique manner, but perhaps the best example is the album’s closer, “Forms,” which reframes the religious language of rebirth and changing form in the context of a musical experience, specifically dancing. Though the track opens with a fuzzed-out thrown down, it soon coagulates into a harmonic chant which allows for pensive retreat into the listener’s own mind even as our bodies are drawn into the song’s communal rhythm.

Whether the foursome are jamming on a classic garage beat or channeling the circular rhythms of Anatolian rock, the instrumentation on You Are is difficult to separate from the lyrics in part because the chorus of voices so deftly elevate the melodies. The guitar squall veers into Sabbath territory on “Sonic Bloom,” but even at its most vociferous, the riffs are rich and and enthralling as opposed to the dull bludgeon common to many psych revival records. Despite the occasional forays into proto-metal and the band’s desire that the listener feel blissed out, after the album is returned to its sleeve, don’t confuse You Are with a turquoise-studded invitation to hop in the van and zone out. Instead, it’s a thoughtful exhortation to lay down on the forest floor, feel the rhythm of the earth, and embrace the community around you—a message perhaps more prescient in 2019 than it was in the ‘60s.” – Russell Rockwell / Immersive Atlanta