by David Wilikofsky
Released on Sister Polygon in 2018, Florry’s debut album Brown Bunny was a lo-fi indie rock gem, music whose slightly ramshackle qualities imbued it with more charm and character than a perfectly polished effort could muster. A lot has happened in the three years since that album’s release: a follow up album was recorded and scrapped, after which frontwoman Sheridan Frances Medosch began attending college and slowed down her songwriting. After a period of musical inactivity, Medosch started writing again during the pandemic; many of the songs on Big Fall, Florry’s sophomore outing, come from this recent period of creativity. It’s a record that retains the charms of Florry’s debut but pushes the project in new directions.
It’s hard to get a handle on the sound of Big Fall. Opener “You Don’t Know” begins with Medosch counting in the band, who quickly lock into a steady, steel-guitar laden country groove. While the song and much of the album retain the looseness of the band’s previous recordings, they cover a lot more stylistic territory than Brown Bunny. The influence of cosmic country and Americana evident on “You Don’t Know” looms large throughout, from the lively piano of “Say Your Prayers” to the folky “Big Fall”. There’s the darker, more melancholic fingerpicking of tracks like “Drivin'”, or throwbacks to the band’s indie rock roots like closer “Lovely”. Others are straight out of left field, like the loose punk romp “Older Girlfriend”, and ebullient offbeat disco of “Everyone I Love You”. It’s a wide ranging mix that could easily sound like a hodgepodge if not anchored by Medosch’s vocals, which provide a through line across each track.
Six of Big Fall’s songs came from Medosch’s writing during the pandemic, while the other four came from the recordings sessions for Florry’s scrapped sophomore album. That “lost” album was reportedly dark and angsty, with most songs written by Medosch between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. Knowing this information helps you begin to make sense of the album’s eclecticism: rather than hearing these disparate sounds as out of place, it allows you to understand them in relation to one another. Some may consider the album’s sonic variety a weakness, but I’d argue it’s integral to the charm of Big Fall. It’s a sonic scrapbook, snapshots of where Florry has been in the past three years and where it might be headed. Reportedly the band is already working on over an hour of new material for their next album; your guess is as good as mine as to what it’ll sound like, but I’m excited to hear it.