Sunflower Bean - Shake

On the five track ‘Shake’, we find Sunflower Bean furiously delving deeper into the riff-laden rabbit hole they started down with 2019’s stellar ‘King of the Dudes’ and continued through 2022’s ‘Headful of Sugar’: a vigorous will to explore huge riffs while never quite standing still. The opening title track and follow-up ‘Lucky Number’ manage somehow to both hint at a heavier than ever nature yet temper it somewhat with vocal effects and sonic layering, while the final two marry this current turn with the Sunflower Bean of old. ‘Serial Killer’ has echoes of the trio’s first two albums while vocalist Julia Cumming channels PJ Harvey, and ‘Angelica’ uses that same shoegazey palette to grunge-down their ‘70s blues rock choices. It’s centrepiece ‘Teach Me To Be Bad’ that’s the most exhilarating here, though, the heaviness hinted at earlier finally beginning to seep through while psych-lite fuzziness and a sizeable guitar solo leaves the track in the mid-point between a less linear Royal Blood and an NYC counterpart to bluesy Californian pair Deap Vally.