Skeleton Flower, Fruit Juice, Tomo Nakayama, the Tiger Tails
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Led by singer-songwriter Haruko Crow Nishimura, Skeleton Flower are a new group composed of fellow Degenerate Art Ensemble members Joshua Kohl, Scott Teske, Adam Koze, and Ambrose Nortness. If you're familiar with this Seattle multimedia performance troupe, you may be surprised by how conventional-sounding Skeleton Flower's self-titled debut is. They've created a seven-song collection that takes indie rock to art school in the manner of St. Vincent, Dirty Projectors, and Deerhoof. Nishimura’s endearingly quirky voice comes off like a Japanese Joanna Newsom, and Nortness’s bass clarinet and saxophone lines sometimes skew the songs into chamber-jazz territory. However, Skeleton Flower's final two tracks—“The Red Shoes” and “Mirrored Sky”—hint at Björk's phantasmal electronic songcraft, and are all the more interesting for that.
by Dave Segal