Floral Prince

Prolific Bay Area songwriter Kevin Patrick Sullivans work as Field Medic softens the impact of bitingly personal folk songs with both blankets of textural lo-fi production and an off-handed approach to presentation. His 2019 album Fade into the Dawn might have been a little less captivating without its dreamy sheen of cassette four-track fidelity and less-conventional arrangements of muted drum machine and layered vocal takes. The warm, dazzled sonics provided a counterbalance to the sharpness of Sullivans lyrics, taking the emotional sting out of lines that ran from stunning vulnerability to directness that can be crude and comical. Floral Prince amplifies all facets of Sullivans uncommon take on folk songwriting, patching together demo-quality recordings with more fleshed-out productions and tracks marked by sweetly blemished first-take performances. Previously released track I Want You So Bad It Hurts is one of the more polished songs on Floral Prince, but still sounds like it was recorded at home. The song is a prime example of Sullivans distinctive approach to songwriting, using a delicate arrangement of slow-moving drums and bright acoustic guitars to house lyrics about a complex romantic entanglement caught somewhere between real feelings and detached, drunken hookups. Songs like Its So Lonely Being Sober and I Will Not Mourn Who I Was That Has Gone Away sound like they were recorded quickly on a smart phone, adding a sense of charming lightheartedness to Sullivans otherwise heavy lyrics about embracing sobriety after years of hard living on tour. The album moves fluidly between raw, almost incidental-sounding recordings like these and more produced tracks. The pastoral Better Way adds atmospheric clouds of piano to its mix, and one track later Talkin Johnny & June (Your Arms Around Me) is a ragged duet between Sullivan and Great Grandpa vocalist Alex Menne, no less beautiful for its no-tech recording. Themes of getting older come up more on Floral Prince than previous Field Medic albums, with tunes like Older Now (It Hurts) and Before Your Body Goes looking at aging and death in ways both abstract and humorously direct. The full listening experience Sullivan crafts on Floral Prince is warm and pleasantly disjointed, like a mixtape of new music given with sheepish excitement from one good friend to another. ~ Fred Thomas