REVIEW: Floral Image - Gone Down Meadowland

Norwich’s own Floral Image invite you to the psychedelic soundscape of their debut album Gone Down Meadowland. Decked out in double denim, colourful beanies, and the occasional newsboy cap, the quintet release ten songs in a saturated hue, worthy of the Fuzz Club roster.

Panning left to right and slowly building, the intro to ‘Meadowland’ feels as if you’re waking up in another world, both entranced and bewildered. One may picture Meadowland itself to be a vast hillside dazzling in light, with the hazy mirage of Floral Image in the distance, casting out their dreamlike refrains. The pace is set for the album with the glittering, layered instrumentation moving through ‘The Dream’. The track not only introduces some brilliant lyricism to the record, but adds a bleakness that ‘Meadowland’ doesn't prepare you for; the minor key and cadence of the words ‘nothing’s wrong, we sail on the dream’ guts the song with a sense of impending doom, which is allowed to sit and brew quietly before it cathartically explodes further down the tracklist.

Floral Image’s attempts to draw on a sense of ‘glorious solitude’ are certainly striking a chord, despite their playful demeanour. The group’s wit and creativity shines through on this project; it is vivid and cinematic, driven by tracks like ‘Burning 305’, the album’s first single. The faster bassline and echoing vocals feel like being led on an adventure through the auspicious trip that is Meadowland. The group are particularly cinematic in their visuals for later single ‘Howling Dog Song’ (don’t worry, we’ll get to it). Rather than a hazy hillside, the group are seen clambering a cliff’s edge in their matching outfits, to retrieve a staff that inexplicably transforms them, in frantic b-movie fashion, into howling dogs themselves. This goofy, retro tribute to older cinematic tropes cements Floral Image’s appreciation for psychedelic rock’s core; its surrealism and experimentation feel exciting yet refreshingly familiar.

‘Gone Down Meadowland’ is undoubtedly a highly stylised project. Composed over six weeks in a home studio last summer, and impressively produced themselves, the band appeared to have a clear vision for their debut. The album suffers on occasion from this, where the heavily layered instrumentalism can feel cloying, but I can see where fans of the genre would revel in the dreamy depths of tracks like ‘The Score’ and the surprisingly named ‘Boogietown’. Here you are, expecting groovy rhythms reminiscent of Lipps Inc’s classic ‘Funkytown’, only to be met by far more soothing middle to the album.

That said though, Floral Image are by no means lacking any groove of their own, as the second half of the album picks up the pace to introduce ‘Tiergarten’. Luring you in with sixteenth notes on the hi-hat and building synths that slowly add to the song’s texture, ramping up the gain to create fast and fuzzy riffs that are honestly my highlight of the album. Having lived in Norwich until recently, this writer has heard murmurs of Floral Image’s stage presence, and to witness the majesty of this track live would be to see these bohemian rockers truly come into their own.

Their setlist does indeed include this exhilarating track, and appears to be played consecutively with the next track, ‘Howling Dog Song’. Favoured by BBC Radio 6 upon its recent single release, this song could quite easily tear Norwich Arts Centre to the ground this May, with a chorus of gleeful onlookers joining in the refrain of ‘we’re howling, howling’, before the group ups the tempo and, with a few barks here and there, completely descends. This surrealism feels like the perfect way to capture the insanity of the song’s subject; a disdain for the political state of the planet, where ‘everyone’s a xenophobe, everyone's a homophobe’. Referring to the majority of humanity as ‘comatose’, Floral Image seek to gather the other ‘dogs’ in the world with this erratic and frenzied rejection of such a life.

After the sheer excitement for ‘Tiergarten’ and ‘Howling Dog Song’, ‘Sun For Hire’ feels like the perfect way for Floral Image to round off this project. Its soft, layered harmonies and shimmering, whirring effects over Mitch Forsyth’s deliciously paced rhythms incorporate all that’s best of this vibrant and indulgent soundscape. Mastered by King Gizzard’s very own Joseph Carra, the album shows Floral Image already gaining recognition and showing a lot of promise in their niche. Despite some variety in the luxuriate and measured, and the jaunty and powerful tracks, there’s a consistency in the depth of Gone Down Meadowland, not just in the layers of sound, but in the curation of this psych pop triumph.

Score: 7/10

Gone Down Meadowland will be released on April 25th 2025.

Words: Tabitha Smith

Photos: Floral Image