| Sunflower Bean | |
| Landscape: | yes |
| Origin: | Glen Head, New York and Brooklyn, New York, US |
| Genre: | Glam rock, indie rock, post-punk revival, psychedelic rock |
| Label: | Fat Possum, Mom + Pop Music |
| Years Active: | 2013–present |
| Current Members: | Julia Cumming Olive Faber Nick Kivlen |
Sunflower Bean is an American rock band from Glen Head, New York and Brooklyn founded in 2013. The band consists of Julia Cumming (bass, lead vocals), Nick Kivlen (guitars, backing vocals), and Olive Faber (drums).[1] Their most recent album Headful of Sugar was released in May 2022.
Kivlen and Faber were childhood acquaintances who both enrolled at North Shore High School in Glen Head, New York in 2009. They initially collaborated when Olive briefly subbed for the drummer in Turnip King, the band for which Nick was the bassist.[2] By early 2013, the two began to create their own original music, practising and writing in Faber's basement.[3] The name of their new band apparently came about due to Kivlen's obsession with sunflower seeds alongside Faber's concurrent love of coffee and coffee beans. The Manhattan-based Cumming, who had been performing in the band Supercute! along with Rachel Trachtenburg since 2009, met Faber and Kivlen at an early Sunflower Bean show; she agreed to join the band as bassist in August 2013, as Supercute! was dissolving.[4] In the following year, the band moved from Long Island to Bushwick, Brooklyn, becoming active in the borough's thriving "DIY" scene,[5] even as they felt ambivalent about much of the scene's aesthetic.[6]
The band's appearance at the 2014 CMJ Music Marathon received good notices from All Songs Considered's Bob Boilen[7] and from The New York Times's Jon Pareles, who wrote "New York is still home to bands as varied as Sunflower Bean, whose music suggests what might have happened if psychedelia had emerged after punk and the Police rather than before."[8] They released their first EP, ‘’Show Me Your Seven Secrets’’, initially through their Bandcamp page on January 5, 2015.,[9] and later via Fat Possum Records. The EP, which features the singles "Tame Impala" and "2013", was called "astonishingly good" by the NME.[10] (The band, fans of Tame Impala, had named a song after the Australian combo, noting that Tame Impala itself had named a song "Led Zeppelin".[6]) Cumming provided a good description of the band's sound at the time to i-D: "We used to call it 'neo-psychedelia for the digital age', and now we've just been calling it 'night music', however someone may take that. It's like if Black Sabbath mixed with The Smiths, maybe?"[11] The band - then as now - toured relentlessly, gaining themselves the title of New York City's "hardest-working band" in 2014 [12]); they still tour extensively today, both as headliners and as openers for bands like Pixies, Wolf Alice, DIIV, Foxygen, Best Coast, Cherry Glazerr and Sleigh Bells.
After a successful series of performances at South by Southwest 2015, the band was signed to Fat Possum Records, and an inaugural 7" single ("I Hear Voices" b/w "The Stalker") was released on July 24. On November 12, 2015, they premiered the single "Wall Watcher" on The Fader, announcing also the cover art, release date and track list of their first album, Human Ceremony.[13] The album, which had a more nuanced and pop-friendly feel than the band's earlier "heavy neo-psychedelia" recordings, was released on February 5, 2016, via Fat Possum Records.[14] The album was recorded at Thump Studios in Greenpoint, Brooklyn in eleven days - produced by Matthew Molnar (formerly of the band Friends) and engineered by Jarvis Taveniere. The Fader wrote that Human Ceremony's "sounds are retro, but the lyrics grapple with the loneliness of contemporary existence"; Faber opined to the magazine that the album was “about the weight of being alive,”, while Kivlen wondered how alien civilizations would grapple with seemingly incomprehensible present-day human behaviors on Earth: “If there was an alien text book, there would be a picture, and the alien-language caption would just say, like, 'Human Ceremony'."[15] Billboard (magazine)'s Joe Lynch wrote "Even though no one in Sunflower Bean is of legal drinking age, the Brooklyn indie trio's Human Ceremony is one of the most fully realized, sonically eclectic debut albums (everything from psych pop to stoner metal gets touched upon) in a minute".[16]
"I Was a Fool", the first single released from Sunflower Bean's second album Twentytwo in Blue, debuted on NPR's "Songs We Love" series on November 3, 2017,[17] distributed by Mom + Pop Music in the US and by Lucky Number Music worldwide.[18] The album, released on March 23, 2018, was co-produced by Matthew Molnar and Jacob Portrait (of Unknown Mortal Orchestra), recorded at Thump Studios by Jarvis Taveniere, and mixed by Portrait. The band released a second single ("Crisis Fest") on January 12, 2018.[19]
The band released an EP, King of the Dudes, on January 25, 2019 on the Mom + Pop Music label. The EP featured the single "Come For Me".[20] .
A single, "Baby Don't Cry", was issued on Mom + Pop on October 13, 2021.[21] This song was included on the band's third full-length album, Headful of Sugar, which was released on May 6, 2022 on Mom + Pop.[22]
The EP Shake is released on September 27, 2024, which is accompanied by a 14-minute performance based video directed by Isaac Roberts.[23]
Sunflower Bean's influences come from various genres and artists. The acts include Beach Fossils, Black Sabbath, The Byrds, Captured Tracks, The Cure, Devo, DIIV, Fleetwood Mac, Glam Rock, Led Zeppelin, Connan Mockasin, The Modern Lovers, Neu!, Nirvana, Pink Floyd, The Ramones, The Rolling Stones, Sex Pistols, The Smiths, Spacemen 3/Spiritualized, Sun Kil Moon, Talking Heads, Tame Impala, Tonstartssbandht, Total Slacker, T. Rex, The Velvet Underground, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, The Who, and Brian Wilson.[24] [25] [26]
| Details | Peak chart positions | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| UK [27] | |||
| Human Ceremony |
| — | |
| Twentytwo in Blue |
| 39 | |
| Headful of Sugar |
| — |
| Show Me Your Seven Secrets |
| |
|---|---|---|
| From the Basement (covers EP) |
| |
| King of the Dudes |
| |
| Shake |
|