“We’re feasting with the angels now.”
Nostalgia is a feeling that is as ubiquitous as it is curious. In our collective mind’s eye, rosy, film grained-visions of decades long past are beyond magnetic. Just as it’s human nature to fall into aching sonder, you don’t even need to have been alive at the time to fondly “remember” the 80s – not least because popular culture can’t stop celebrating them. Directly invoking this lovely mood, a certain “nostalgia even though I wasn’t even there”, is something music has thoroughly cracked. And there are no better genres to turn to but the oozing coolness post punk, and the hypnotic power of shoegaze.
Back in 2015, when the internet was celebrating 80s culture through vaporwave and Simpsonwave, Welsh post punk band Chain of Flowers released their own deliberately nostalgic self titled record. It was an intense album, full of moody headbangers that were piped through fuzzy analogue production. It never made a big splash, but it’s been hard to forget tracks like “Death’s Got A Hold On Me” or “Drained”, and in the intervening years they’ve become their own time capsules for a very different decade. Never Ending Space is their new album, showcasing a different side to the band for their second chapter.
Like so many post punk acts, Chain of Flowers‘ music is grounded by two guitars working in stereo. On this new album, dual guitars go for a “less is more” approach. If the music needs to bite harder, it’s the vocals, synths, drums, or even saxophone that intensify whilst guitars step back to nail a post punk chorus lick. It’s an effective formula the band practice throughout Never Ending Space, separating it from the debut record which favoured romping, all-round intensity. Vocals from Joshua Smith are energised and tight through their layers of delay and echo, with the correct dose of (vitally important) post punk nonchalance.
By turning down the volume and keeping on the groove, Never Ending Space readily danceable. “Cosmic Whip” even calls out for a dancing partner in its chorus (“We laugh, we cry, we scream, we sigh / All dance with this cosmic whip”), and hi-hats and bass respond in playful fashion. “Torlacon” also becomes a high tempo groover once its atmospheric spoken word intro is finished. On the single “Serving Purpose”, Smith sounds effortlessly cool as he casually performs the hook, as catchy as it is detached. Together with the gaze-like atmosphere, Never Ending Space will have you dancing like it’s a liminal prom night.
The first tracks are earworms that embed themselves more deeply than you’d expect, but the record is consistently strong throughout. The track that goes hardest is “Amphetamine Luck”, which has great fun with multiple vocal lines before a graceful fadeout. “Old Human Material” is the last straightforward track on the record with a belter of a chorus. There are a crop of odd-ones-out in the tracklist that invoke an uncertain mood. The almost lead-guitar-free “Praying Hands, Turtle Doves” celebrates the synthesizer misadventures of the 80s with its retro patches. The record ends on a pleasant come-down interlude (“Anomia”) and the title track “Never Ending Space”, a dizzying, densely packed song built from tom grooves and eccentric vocals.
It would be a mistake to make post punk in high fidelity, but Never Ending Space can be quite crisp when it needs to be. The guitars and bass have “that” 80s chorus and precision, but much less fuzz and gain than the debut album. Thus, the shoegaze-like, layered elements that are integral to Chain of Flowers now come from the synthesisers and vocals. These build over time, so a track like “Cosmic Whip” starts quite grounded, and gradually adds its soupy layers of echoing vocals and tasteful keys. The band jokingly describes the extra instrumentation as an “orchestra”, and when you hear the horns on “Fire (In The Heart Of Hearts)” and “Praying Hands, Turtle Doves”, you’ll tend to agree.
It’s lovely to have a follow up to Chain of Flower’s self-titled record – it’s aged well, but being eight years old, it was at risk of becoming a forgotten time capsule. Never Ending Space is an excellent continuation of their canon and an exploration of new territory. More so that before, they capture a nostalgic vibe with an atmosphere to match. Forget vaporwave, or even “slowed” TikTok remixes; this is music built from the ground up for reverb and remembrance.
8/10
Never Ending Space releases on the 26th May through ALTER, and can be pre-ordered here.