This Is Really Going To Hurt. Flyte

Can a band still be unique in 2021? I'm seriously doubting that. Can a band produce a nice to great album in 2021? Without a doubt. Enter Flyte. With it's second album the band caught my attention on first listen and hasn't let go since. With conjuring up happy memories all the way back to Roger McGuinn's nasal singing on The Byrds' first hits. In touching upon a lot of nice music along the way back to 1965, Flyte shows that it knows where to get the best in alternative pop.

With a back catalogue in my home spanning decades, I run into so many references that they are too many to mention. Some will get by later, don't worry. Flyte manages to incorporate these influences in such pleasant ways into its own music that This Is Really Going To Hurt, musically does all but hurt, let alone really. Without ever getting too commercial all sorts of pop music come by that makes Flyte's music spark at the right moments.

Flyte is a London based band that released its first single in 2013. Album 'The Loved Ones' was released in 2017. Somewhere since then the band lost its keyboardist, Sam Berridge. The remaining trio Will Taylor, Jon Supran and Nicolas Hill still harmonise a lot on the new album. Having worked with Courtney Barnett's producer Burke Reid in 2017, the band now went to Los Angeles to record with Justin Raisen, Andrew Sarlo and Ali Chant.

Promo photo

This cooperation results in an album that references CSN&Y in some of the songs containing intricate harmonies, contains The Beatles like string contributions and holds alternative pop in the best tradition of Big Star and Teenage Fanclub. When Flyte rocks in 'There's A Woman', I hear Neil Young's 'Cinnamon Girl' echoing in the song. In other words, nothing is truly straightforward on This Is Really Going To Hurt. Just because the world knows the music of these bands for nearly 30 up to nearly 60 years, we must not forget that bands like The Beatles, CSN&Y or Big Star must have stunned their fans many-a-time in the 1960s and 70s. There's no band that changed its course so many times with groundbreaking songs that we now all call Beatlesque when other bands are influenced. Flyte certainly is among those bands.

Flyte gets away with it all. The trio knows how to write interesting songs and play them in ways that makes them interesting to listen to. Just listen to closing song 'Never Get To Heaven' and be convinced. A good song is a good song, life can be that simple.

Wout de Natris

 

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