the great pumpkin

The Dry Spells released their debut album, Too Soon For Flowers,  in 2009, and after hearing just one song I ordered a copy of it. The Dry Spells might not be a name you know yet, but you might be familiar with some other projects they have been involved in such as Citay and Sonny and the Sunsets.

After hearing the record for the first time all the way through I was still wondering how an album as powerful as this wasn’t being talked about all over. While all of the members have played in the well known Citay , the Dry Spells should not just be written off as a side project. The reference to Fleetwood Mac is obvious, and well documented in everything I have read about the band, due to the fact that “Rhiannon” is the last song on the digital version of the album this is a little bit of a cop out, and in the end the Dry Spells are much more than that. Drawing influence from folk, classic rock, eastern/oriental music, psychadelica, and integrating almost hymnal chanting choruses, and extremely well orchestrated compositions The Dry Spells have created a masterpiece that doesn’t conform to a genre and in my opinion will stand up with classic rock records for years to come.

Too Soon For Flowers is an album that is almost too good to describe in words, and I feel like anything I say can’t possibly do it justice. On that note I will let you decide for yourself. Antenna Farm has made “Batwood”, the last track on the LP available for download:

[mp3] The Dry Spells- “Batwood”

• Buy the LP here.

While this track is amazing, “Srutri” and the title track, “Too Soon for Flowers” are the two that I have been obsessed with, and while you need to buy the album to hear the LP version of these songs The Dry Spells have recorded them live for Luxury Wafers in a session at Chessvolt Studios in Los Angeles:

[mp3] The Dry Spells- “Srutri (live)”

I also discovered the gem that is “Heliotrope” over at Luxury Wafers, which is a track that doesn’t appear on the LP but upon first hearing it I it sounded so familiar and in tune with the rest of their songs I could have sworn that I already knew it…leading me to believe that The Dry Spells have more wonderful records to come.

[mp3] The Dry Spells- “Heliotrope (live)”

Make your way over to Luxury Wafers for two more live mp3s from The Dry Spells. The recording quality is phenomenal on this session, and would like to thank the people at Luxury Wafers for bringing us these additional version, and the new track. I’m going to be following their site much more closely from now on.

Again, you can buy Too Soon For Flowers here.

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This is an album that I have been trying to write about since the beginning of December.  If I had gotten it earlier in the year I’m sure it would have made my year end list, and it is has been getting more play that most things around my house these days.

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• more info on Sonny and the Sunsets can be found here.
• more on the Endless Nest collective can be found here.
• thanks to klk for pointing out the video above to me.