Sunflower Bean: “We want to speak on the extremity of feeling”

Rather than simply a band, Sunflower Bean have always seemed like a gang; a chosen family with an unbreakable tightness. For much of the first seven years of their collective existence, they lived like one, too – in each other’s pockets as they toured relentlessly (part from passion and part from necessity) and hunkered down in studios together as they made sludgy, sparkling and horizon-broadening records in between.

“I felt like we were the mob for a little while,” grins guitarist and vocalist Nick Kivlen, referring not just to the band’s core trio, but their wider circle of friends in New York. Right now, the group are back in the city to rehearse for an upcoming radio session and, to his right, bassist and vocalist Julia Cumming nods seriously: “It’s hard to get in the family and it’s hard to get out.”

Bands drifting apart and having their bond eroded by opposing creative desires is a tale as old as time, but from the outside, it seemed unlikely that it could happen to Sunflower Bean. They had already weathered several storms together since emerging with their debut EP ‘Show Me Your Seven Secrets’ in 2015. There was the battle to make the group into a living as the music industry tightened its purse strings, and the uncertainty of the pandemic and the pause of live music leading to the loss of both income and purpose – not to mention personal ups and downs. Yet, after they’d shared their third album ‘Headful Of Sugar’ in 2022, they faced their toughest challenge to their invincible connection yet.

“We never really even spent time apart,” says drummer Olive Faber. “I think [the tension came from] acknowledging differences for the first time and then the awkwardness that came with that, and trying to move through and keep going.” She cites those differences as “artistic” ones, and that subsequent discomfort springs from “when you do something for a long time and [don’t] really pay attention to how you’re actually feeling.”

“There’s a lot of intense stuff going on, and it’s not just because we’re weirdos” – Julia Cumming

It got to a point where the three band members were on such different pages that they were confused about what their next steps should be. Cumming describes being in the studio, working on a song, and being stumped about the direction it should follow. “That was tough because us musically being together was always a really happy place – it’s a place where the world melts away,” she explains. In this period, though, Sunflower Bean found themselves “at an impasse” that was “causing alarm for us”.

Instead of accepting that their time together was up, they kept trying. They knew they could create magic together, and that made the band worth fighting for. Cumming points to ‘There’s a Part I Can’t Get Back’, a beautiful but melancholy highlight from their new album ‘Mortal Primetime’, as proof of this. She had originally recorded a version of the song with Faber “during a time when we weren’t all collaborating a lot” and returned to it as the trio ploughed forward on their fourth record.

“We were working on it and getting to that point where you’ve worked on something so much, you’re like, ‘Is this shit? Is it time to stop?’” the bassist recalls. “That was when Nick found the strumming pattern that had this aggression that really made the song come alive. Without that moment with all of us together and all of the trust and intuition that’s in that room, that song would never have seen the light of day because it just wouldn’t have been worth it.”

‘Mortal Primetime’, due for release this Friday (April 25), will make you thankful Sunflower Bean stuck it out. The band hit harder than ever, once again bottling their ferocious on-stage energy by recording live in the same room after exploring loops and samples on ‘Headful Of Sugar’.

“The grass is always greener. That’s literally it – you do one thing; you want to do another thing,” Faber shrugs, noting that the explorations of their third album coincided with a time when she was just starting to learn how to produce. “When you’re a baby producer, you’re like, ‘Oh my god, I can cut things up and make them sound like they didn’t before!’ But after a while, you hit a wall with that kind of stuff [and you realise] you just need to write a good song and record it well.”

For Cumming, their 2022 album was “our statement on how people listened to music at that time” and, at that point, the coolest thing they thought they could do. “Things do move in a pendulum, and I think it feels now like the coolest thing we could do is not waste people’s time by creating a mid-approach indie record that isn’t going for the gut,” she says.

“The more happiness you find through other people, the more fulfilling your life is going to be” – Nick Kivlen

Sunflower Bean couldn’t be accused of holding back on ‘Mortal Primetime’, a record that dials up the jagged riffs (‘Champagne Taste’, ‘Nothing Romantic’) and lands a punch with its gut-wrenching lyrics. “I’m begging you to / Take out your insides in front of me,” Cumming sings on the dreamy ’60s pop of ‘Take Out Your Insides’, while on the gentle rush of ‘Look What You’ve Done To Me’ she expresses a desire for a love “so hard that it chokes me and marks me with my teeth”. On ‘There’s A Part I Can’t Get Back’, she confronts the person who groomed her in her youth, her voice steely and determined as she wishes: “If I die before I wake / I pray the Lord lets me get even first.”

“I’m talking about the sexual abuse that I’ve sung about on all of our records, but hidden in different songs. This time, I’m saying it in the clearest way possible because I’m not as afraid of it anymore. There’s a lot of very intense stuff that’s going on, and it’s definitely not just because we’re weirdos,” Cumming says with a wry smile. “It’s because we want to speak on the extremity of feeling.”

That intensity permeates ‘Nothing Romantic’, if slightly more subtly. “When I reached the peak / Of isolation mountain / There was only aching and my misery,” Cumming sings. Here, the band reject the myth of the tortured artist and that suffering is the only path to creating great art. “I’m always halfway in the door with it and then halfway out the door with [that idea],” Kivlen sighs.

For him, though, the song is ultimately a reflection of the message he’s realised over the last year that he wants to send through his songwriting. “It’s about community and writing about a collective experience through your personal experience, and fighting back against the way that we’re separated and atomised collectively,” he explains. “Money is the thing that causes division and destroys community and makes people want to isolate and live less because it’s convenient to live less. The more happiness you find through other people, the more fulfilling your life is going to be.”

There might be more physical distance between them now with Cumming and Kivlen now living in Los Angeles, but on the other side of their crisis, Sunflower Bean’s core community is as close as ever. “This band means home [to me] because when you know what your home is, you don’t have to be afraid of taking a little trip away,” Cumming reasons. “You know you can come back, and that’s where your heart is. I know that’s cheesy, but I feel more secure in that now.” On her left, Kivlen agrees: “It feels like a baseline. The band is always going to be there.”

Sunflower Bean’s ‘Mortal Primetime’ is out on April 25 via Lucky Number.

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