The Ramona Flowers… Blooming

Interview: The Ramona Flowers

Published on September 19th, 2013 | Jonny Abrams

The Ramona Flowers recently ‘dropped’ new single “Brighter” and have been working on their forthcoming debut album with Lamb producer Andy Barlow, so we caught up with front man Steve Bird to find out more…

How’s your summer been in terms of shows and festivals?

We played at Liverpool Sound City and lots of these other ones they put on in towns and cities where there are shows all around.

We did LeeFest in South East London, which was great, and the best one we did was Wilderness Festival, which was the most amazingly beautiful setting. We played on the Saturday, the gig was great and we all stayed for the whole weekend, so that one was probably the best of the summer.

Next year I think we’ll be playing nearly all of them, but this year we were still recording our album so we weren’t able to do all the ones we wanted to do. To get our album out early next year, we still had to get a lot of stuff finished.

You’re recording the album with Andy Barlow from Lamb…

Yeah, he’s great.

How did that come about?

We sent him some early demos of our stuff because our guitarist Sam is a massive Lamb fan; we’re all big fans of them, but Sam’s really liked them for a long, long time. Andy got back to us saying he really liked it so we met him and got on great.

We’ve been together for years now so we were finding our sound, and he helped us mould it into exactly what we want. It’s a really good relationship, we work with him on everything we do and he kind of takes us where we want to go.

Would you say that the singles you’ve released so far give a good indication as to what we can expect from the album?

I would say yeah, definitely. Our first single “Dismantle and Rebuild” is sort of our massive ending and shows a little bit of the emotional side.

We’ve kind of got two sides: a big, powerful side and an emotional side, which “Lust and Lies” is completely. The new one “Brighter” is definitely our most anthemic song, our most immediate and to-the-point kind of song, and one of our favourites to play live.

We’re not definite about what the next single’s going to be but I think it’s going to be great. I’m excited about that.

How did the Hot Chip and Everything Everything remixes come about?

We just sent them some stuff, they liked it and got back to us, said they’d do it for us. It’s great, I love that Hot Chip remix. Same with Everything Everything; it’s just completely out there, sounds great.

Finally, which albums from 2013 have you most enjoyed?

I really like the new Baths album Obsidian, and the Disclosure one as well. They’re the two I’ve probably listening to the most regularly.

Steve Bird, thank you.

Artists: the ramona flowers

About the Author

Jonny Abrams Editor of Rocksucker and the website's founder, Jonny is passionate about the music he listens to, both good and bad, as well as interviewing his favourite musicians.