Less than twelve months ago, the fortunes of Zac Farro, the multi-instrumentalist mastermind behind HalfNoise, became fruitful and multiplied. First, his injection of pop sensibilities, distilled from classic acts such as the Beatles and the Kinks, into his 2017 EP The Velvet Face gave him a healthy boost. His other band, Paramore, whose album After Laughter was named one of Billboard’s 50 best albums of 2017, handily provided a second, thanks to Paramore allowing Farro to play several of his songs during their live sets on their worldwide After Laughter tour. During those songs, Farro would step out from behind the drum set and sing lead vocals, while frontwoman Hayley Williams, whom Forbes just chose as being among the most influential people in the music industry under the age of thirty, sings backup and plays a tambourine.
Farro has capitalized on such buzz with his new EP Flowerss (May 4), a bite-sized, 20-minute offering that breathes with stick-click count-ins, sunny melodies, and a taste of playful surf guitar.
While HalfNoise’s first EP in 2012 and the band’s first LP in 2014 exhibited Farro’s varied attempts at landing memorable melodies over rhythmic landscapes, Flowerss demonstrates how he has blossomed into a crafter of attractive songs that burrow themselves into the listener’s head. They’re the kind of parasites you want. Echoes of the Beach Boys and Morrissey nudge each other atop the hopping gait of “Every Single Time,” while at the other dynamic end, “Always Young,” the EP’s longest track at a crisp three minutes and forty-one seconds, sets a soothing, psychedelic mood with sustained vocal notes that glide over a hypnotic sitar riff.
Farro’s smart sense of rhythm shapes the feel of Flowerss, especially on the title track, where Farro teases with a few sluggish guitar strums during the intro before escorting us in with the real tempo. The effect is immediate—the song’s laid-back shuffle beat ends up feeling simultaneously faster. Such a pleasing contradiction underpins Farro’s smooth and vaguely jazzy vocals that swirl in a current of Pretenders-esque guitar gone spacy and the whirl of hovering flying saucers curious to have a closer look.
“All That Love Is” unleashes a magnetic dance groove that conjures images of Rio-era Duran Duran meeting Franz Ferdinand in a disco club, with a dollop of trotting bongos worthy of a 70s action flick. Farro almost drops the ball with an awkward vocal melody during the verse that could have been something Coldplay had discarded, but recovers during the sing-along falsetto chorus.
The softness of Farro’s voice possesses a built-in but subtle melancholy that, on past recordings, has complemented his lyrical reflections on lost loves. On Flowerss, Farro has zoomed out to consider the idea of love itself. In “All That Love Is,” Farro offers a realistic examination of some of the emotion’s effects (“All that love’s been / Empty corners inside this town”). The insecurity and vulnerability of “Flowerss” and “My Girl” (“Do I matter to you?” and “Are you thinking about me?”) are answered in “She Said,” where Farro exposes the pitfalls of overthinking love (“She said don’t worry about me / It’s just inside your head”). Despite the bruised hearts inhabiting his lyrics, Farro has chosen to maintain an optimistic outlook through his upbeat, danceable grooves.
Meanwhile, the Venn diagram that is Paramore/Halfnoise—three members of the former’s current touring band are drawn from the ranks of the latter—continues to rake in attention. Paramore just finished its perennial Parahoy cruise, in which said band invites a few acts to play with them on a multi-day jaunt from Florida to the Bahamas and back on a cruise ship. HalfNoise was one of those bands. I wonder what it would take to convince HalfNoise to celebrate their recent success with a vinyl release of The Velvet Face on side A and Flowerss on side B. Until that happens, I’ll just play each digital EP consecutively, with a little break in between for a phantom flip.