Sleepy are a three-piece indie pop group from Sydney, and Flowers is their latest track, recorded across multiple bedroom studios in isolation. It bristles with a nervous energy, but with easy vocal harmonies that have a summer-like, slacker vibe about them, despite Sydney’s imminent winter.
Listening to Flowers, you wouldn’t know it had been created during the lockdown. Whilst there is a scuffed-up and silvery lo-fi sound to the song’s guitars and vocals, the song comes together with a cohesiveness that seems hard to imagine is the product of a band who couldn’t be in the same place at the same time.
Appropriately, Flowers is a song about distant relationships, in tribute to lovers “new, old and long lost”. From time-to-time I find myself thinking about the impact of COVID-19 on love... Those that are stuck apart, those that are together, and those that tried to leave. Most, I think of those new loves that had a spark before the vacuum of the pandemic stole much of the oxygen a new love needs to grow. How many people are hoping that the chemistry is still there once they get the chance to reconnect with someone after the lockdown is over?
Much like nature, I expect love will find a way... Not in the commercial, cinematic sense so much as that as long as there is light, carbon dioxide and water, plants grow... And as long as there are people and they can connect, they will find a certain pleasure in those other people they find. People that make them feel seen, whole, understood and secure, and those people that help them understand themselves a little better.