BIG|BRAVE have been so incremental about their growth that it’s hard to catch. Even as I dig into my fourth review for the trio’s work, I’m really having to dissect the most minute details in order to prepare what I’m about to write. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those people who expect a band to revolutionize their work and/or music as a whole with every album. In fact, BIG|BRAVE have been a comfort band for me over the years because they are reliable in both the emotionality and quality they produce. Where others may see a stagnant, all-too-comfortable bore of a trek, I see the long journey one takes to open up over time, stuffing yourself full of love and care so as to push the toxins out. Easier said than done, just as it is to produce music like this that does so much with so little.
Ten years ago, I couldn’t see myself liking a band like them. A Gaze Among Them was outside of my comfort zone when I reviewed it in 2019, but at least then I was more poised and ready to take in harsher, more repetitive noise walls that demand patience and break you down, but in a non-violent way. And now we’re here, among a chaos of flowers, where, apparently, the rules have changed quite a bit from before. It’s still BIG|BRAVE – we get Robin Wattie’s passionate croon, the double guitar push from her and Mathieu Ball, and Tasy Hudson’s voltaic drumming. Add in Seth Manchester on synths for this album, as well as a handful of other guest performers, and we arrive at a new peak of their sound that’s unlike anything else they’ve produced if you know where to look.
Most upfront with a chaos of flowers is, more than ever, its increased folky feel, stripped back and intimate. Very, very different from nature morte, an album which this one feels like not just a companion piece to, but a near antithesis. It’s a different kind of resonance that I don’t feel this explicitly in BIG|BRAVE‘s greater catalog, only implicitly (I’m simultaneously including and excluding Leaving None But Small Birds, their collaborative album with The Body, which was very folky at heart). But it’s still weighty – absolutely nothing has changed from how these three approach instrumentation. I get Low vibes from some pieces like “quotidian : solemnity” which has a relentless, thick buzzing slathering the walls while Wattie gives the best vocal performance on the album by reaching along her spectrum of range to deliver serene highs and haunting lows and mids. Everything is the same, but it’s not.
Where nature morte was explosive, even from the first damn song, a chaos of flowers is destitute. Entire swaths of quietness or full-blown silence permeate songs like on “a song for Marie part iii”, as if recorded in hometown fields and hills when the wind is at rest. The negative space is arresting and shows a deeper connection and commitment to the minimalism they always play with in their music. Mixed with the folk tonalities, there’s some moments on here that sound like a brooding Western drama. “i felt a funeral” is lyrically adapted from a somber Emily Dickinson poem and given new life by BIG|BRAVE in this manner. It is most certainly funereal – the slow metering of the lyrics, the lurching of the instrumentation, and the dark tones all add up to a deeply affecting piece, one I struggle to find a good analog to within their older work. Maybe “Wited. Still and All…” from VITAL? They’re still wildly different songs, just as this is a wildly different album when you dig into the details.
“not speaking of the ways” is most like other BIG|BRAVE work, using the repetition of bold and wobbly guitars as a foundation leading into tremendous, feedback-soaked wails on the back half. There’s also some saxophone mixed in there performed by Patrick Shiroishi, but it’s hard to find in the lovely, reverberated mess that clings to my eardrums. “canon : in canon” deserves a mention as well for similar reasons, but somewhere in the middle of the extremes. Delicate drums keep a growling guitar monster at bay, clawing through metal bars and becoming restless, but never breaking through. I have to hand it to “moonset” as well for becoming one of my favorite tracks from the band ever, moving with such a loose coordination and building upon itself until it erupts in a pronounced, calculated way that only this band can do.
The rest of a chaos of flowers runs the gamut of moods and approaches making it one of the most diverse BIG|BRAVE albums yet. This is indeed a new era for the band as I posited in my nature morte review. Things just feel different now – more mature, more realized, less dependent on the harshness of noise – like talking your feelings out instead of screaming them, but still allowing yourself to feel the reality of your emotions even if they’re ugly. The cover art is exemplary of this with colorful, vibrant flowers and foliage punching through the white space of a blank, listless slate turning it to liquid in the process. This is the band’s eighth project so it’s only natural to see a profound growth in people over that time, but to see it so expertly realized and made manifest especially with minimalist music like this is something else entirely. BIG|BRAVE are still one of my favorite bands ever and this is, like previous projects before it, one of their best albums yet.
