Sydney's We Lost The Sea have been making expansive rock since 2010, and A Single Flower keeps the focus on scale, weight and instrumental colour. Across six tracks, Mark Owen, Matt Harvey and Carl Whitbread handle the guitars, with Harvey also adding noise, while Kieran Elliott's bass and Alasdair Belling's drums give the heavier passages their push. Piano appears in Owen's and Mathew Kelly's credits, alongside Kelly's synths and Fender Rhodes, so the arrangement has more to work with than a standard guitar-and-drum attack. The Gloaming adds strings written, recorded and mixed by Sophie Trudeau.
The band produced the release with Tim Carr, who recorded it at Rancom Street Studios and mixed it at Gnome Labs. That places A Single Flower firmly in Sydney's post-rock and post-metal circle, with acknowledgements for Bird's Robe, Dunk! Translation Loss and New Noise pointing to the wider network around the group. Fans of patient instrumental rock, heavy guitar climaxes and records that leave room for piano and electronics should find plenty here. The track titles suggest a dark arc, from If They Had Hearts through Everything Here Is Black and Blinding to Blood Will Have Blood, though the real draw is the six-piece's range of tones and weight.
