Led by Leo Fincham and Rowan Please (of the Femcels), Worldpeace DMT slinked their way up to cult online forum celebrity status with the breath-of-fresh-air debut record ‘The Velvet Underground & Rowan’ last year. Now, they reveal their earthly organic selves with surprise new mixtape release ‘Flowers Powers’.
Doing the completely normal thing of announcing a second album – ‘Stick Around For Tea’ is out this October – by releasing 11 new tracks, none of which will be from said new album, ‘Flowers Powers’ sees the band move from the terminally online, almost nebulous spotlessness of their former work, and introduce the Worldpeace DMT you can touch, smell and see hit things on a stage in front of you.
Having witnessed the band at a rare headline performance at Homerton’s Chat’s Palace earlier this year, the mixtape stays truer to the sparse instrumentation of their live setup: two guitarists, two vocalists, a stand-up drummer rapping tom tom and snare, and whatever needs to come out of the laptop to fill the gaps. It marks a notable shift away from chiptune circuitboard wizardry, and more into the twee-as-you-like psychedelic anti-folk that’s quickly becoming their signature.
And it’s a testament to how fully formed their style has already become that even though the standout track here is a buoyancy cover of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, it exists so comfortably and authentically in their sweet, shambling and capable hands. via the Nursery-rhyme like innocence of ‘Dinosaur Punks’, and goopy, junkshop robotics of ‘artrock’, or hymnic opener ‘Jesus Jesus’ – which reads from the same gospel sheet as J.Spaceman – the chief delight of listening to ‘Flowers Powers’ is more than just ‘this track’, or ‘that track’. To merely exist in this colourful, idealistic childlike universe, for a sweet 20 minutes is a pleasure few others can offer.
Photo by Thomas Connelly
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