ZOEE - FLAW FLOWER
An intriguing debut, Flaw Flower may not be as ground-breaking as the literature it’s inspired by, but it’s fun and peppy and shows a lot of potential for an interesting musical journey.
Zoee, aka Harriet Zoe Pittard, steps out alone for her debut solo album, Flaw Flower, a delicate and honest look at the beauty of being flawed.
Having previously worked with Joe Goddard (Hot Chip) and hyper-pop collective PC Music, Flaw Flower sees Zoee explore her own fascinating sound and creating quirky pop tracks that give the listener a candid glimpse into the inner workings of her world. An 80s inspired record decorated with imagery from modern literature including ‘The Flowering Corpse’ by Djuna Barnes, ‘A Winter Ship’ by Sylvia Plath and Maggie Nelson’s ‘Bluets’, and gentle undertones of Grimes, Flaw Flower intertwines literary themes with her own notes jotted down on her phone to explore the connection between reality and surrealism.
Filled with found sounds, both pulled from the internet, and taken from her everyday life, Zoee’s sound sits somewhere between lo-fi ambience and grand melodrama, always reaching for a great crescendo of strings and noise, but never quite arriving there. But mixing this lo-fi with instruments like the improvised jazz sax in ‘The Loft’ and baby grand piano in ‘Host’ adds an interesting element to the sonics of the album, and when these “proper” instruments play off against the samples, Foley and Zoee’s whimsical vocals, something quite magical happens.
Talking about her writing process, Zoee says “I feel like the songs on this album took me deeper into myself, the sad song that I thought was about a boy is still about that but it’s also about loss, about self-determination, about not losing hope, about memory, about domesticity, about detachment, about my dad, about my mum, about change, about feeling incredibly alone, about growing up.”
Stand out track ‘Evening Primrose’ uses dissonant bells and sweeping backing vocals to create a disturbing atmosphere and the fullest, most rounded song on the album.
Although the lyrics of the songs aren’t particularly poetic or moving, they are candid, and the joy of Zoee’s music comes from the intimacy of her allowing us this glimpse into her mind. Her thoughts, sung as if straight from her phone notes, are sometimes funny, sometimes vulnerable and always relatable.
An intriguing debut, Flaw Flower may not be as ground-breaking as the literature it’s inspired by, but it’s fun and peppy and shows a lot of potential for an interesting musical journey for both Zoee and her listeners, and we look forward to hearing what she comes up with next.
Jess Distill
★★★☆☆