Interview Back From The Brink: Sunflower Bean

Singer and bassist Julia Cumming had split up with her long-term partner, while guitarist Nick Kivlen had grown disillusioned with New York and was arranging a move to the West Coast. It hadn’t been that long since drummer Olive Faber had come out as transgender, and she’d also begun work on a new musical project, Stars Revenge.

“There was never a big blowout or breakup,” Nick reflects today, on a transatlantic Zoom call. “It was never like, ‘Alright, it’s over’, but I definitely wouldn’t have been surprised if we never made another album again, you know?”

Confusion and uncertainty reigned, and they soon made a collective, yet strained decision to take a step back. “The sessions and the writing were just not going well, and we couldn’t really be productive together,” he continues. “I think we were trying to force it and eventually we just had to be like, ‘Maybe we need to take a break and focus on other things’. And that just wasn’t the case for the ten years that we had been a band.”

Nevertheless, the band continued to play live intermittently throughout 2023, and in that setting at least, it was obvious that the Sunflower Bean electrical current was as strong as ever; a particularly raucous, self-curated SXSW showcase served as a timely reminder that they had too much to lose.

From then on, Julia and Nick continued to write separately, each delighted to find that the enforced change in perspective had cleared space for their creativity to re-emerge. Tentatively, they re-convened in Nick’s new Los Angeles base, convinced that if they could combine the energy of the live shows with rejuvenated new material, then the future of Sunflower Bean had a chance.

“It’s one of those crazy, faint ironies of life that I really do think that this is our best record,” Nick says. “The fact is that it almost didn’t happen, but then we were able to use the skills we had created over the years to make something I’m more proud of than any other album that we’ve ever done.”

It was a return to first principles, and a rejection of the idea that their focus should be wasted on modern record industry trappings – there are no songs surgically tooled for virality here. “It was just like, alright, we are here and even that in itself is just a triumph, so the album just felt like play,” he says. “We had already won just by getting the chance to make it, so we made whatever we wanted to make.”

‘Mortal Primetime’ is an oddly evocative title, sounding vulnerable and powerful at the same time. Through their struggles, Sunflower Bean have imbued their music with the experience that part of getting older is reckoning with susceptibility to life’s twists and turns.

“We’ve always been obsessed with time, and Sunflower Bean has almost been an experiment in writing as you grow,” shares Julia. “So many of our fans have literally heard us grow up. We were confident enough to produce this ourselves, and I think there’s something about that process of believing in yourself that makes this moment our prime. This is the best we’ve ever been. It’s the strongest, the most capable and the most grounded, because we all know why we’re here. We’re here for the love of this musical world that we have built together.”

This same confidence has allowed them to be candid in their subject matter, too. Not just grappling with the dissolution of a long-term relationship, Julia - who has previously written about her experience of being groomed - is even more direct on album cut ‘There’s A Part I Can’t Get Back’: “There’s a bag I can’t unpack / It’s always with me / If I die before I wake / I pray the Lord lets me get even first,” she sings.

It’s a mark of the band’s experience that they feel able to handle the song’s gravity, and a clear sign of their renewed closeness that the song could provide an opportunity to process. As such, Julia believes that the album ultimately coheres around the theme of love, in all its forms. “We were able to show love towards each other and that thread is woven through all of these songs,” she says. “There is love for your past [on the album], there is love for your friends, there is trying to learn how to love, there’s the imperfectness of love.”

And what about the love for yourself? “Ah, that’s the real journey,” she answers. “We’ll see if we ever get there.”

Sunflower Bean are nothing if not alternative rock aficionados and their joy at the collaboration is clear. Speaking about working with him on ‘Look What You’ve Done To Me’, Julia recalls: “I was like, ‘We really need this piano part to feel like seasickness, it needs to be played literally as if you’re nauseous and the whole thing is about to fall apart’. We had that trust, he could understand what I was saying without thinking I’m a crazy person.”

Even today, the band throw out artists and influences on the album with abandon – The Who’s rock operas rub shoulders with indie sleaze revivalist The Dare in conversation with Nick, while Julia describes the record as Alice In Chains-meets-Belle & Sebastian, “which is, if I can say so myself, a bizarre thing to do,” she quips.

The budding indie pop charm of breakthrough singles ‘Easier Said’ and ‘I Was A Fool’ remains tightly woven into their DNA, but Sunflower Bean, through hardship and loyalty, have now blossomed into their well-earned maturity. Having flirted with the possibility of it all disappearing, they won’t be giving it up lightly, either.

“I think the band is absolutely on solid ground and who knows what that will bring,” nods Julia. “My hopes and dreams are that we are a New York institution that will always be fighting for real and non-homogenised alternative indie music. My dream is that we will make records together forever.”

‘Mortal Primetime’ is out now via Lucky Number.

Tags: Features, Interviews, April 2025, From The Magazine, Sunflower Bean