Latest Video - So Alive (from Young for the Last Time)
Launch Our MUSIC PLAYER to listen to all of our releases free online!
Also find us on...
Looking for a Putrid Flowers banner for your Myspace profile? Click here to find out how to get one!
History
The Putrid Flowers were founded in NYC with personal and musical connections to the New York City Hardcore and Punk Golden Age of the late 1980s and early 1990s. They quickly impressed critics with their energetic live performances and a social consciousness that they were able to couple with the spontaneity of old punk/hardcore acts.
Indeed, the band would often bring homemade baked goods and hand them out in the middle of their set. Later, they went through a period of playing 2-3 gangster rap covers in their set, often taking out chairs and acoustic guitars and playing them as close as possible to the originals, adding to the fun and absurdity. Their tireless efforts established a reputation among a loyal cache of fans who followed them around to scores of gigs in NYC and the surrounding areas. The energy of their live shows would be captured on a series of seven inches and singles recorded by Chris Fasulo, a student at 5 Towns College, in the school's studio on weekends and vacations. These early tracks were to surface on many prominent punk rock compilations of the mid-late 1990s.
Their first major release, " ...and for the little children, sing. ", was released DIY after some label issues caused the band to go independent. Although all the songs had a certain poppiness to them, they were interested in connecting with underground music fans who felt the same way they did about music. These were people who searched out obscure bands and shared them with friends, and whose identity was forged through a religious devotion to music. The underground did respond well. Fanzines reviewed the album to almost universal praise getting them high marks in reviews in sources like
Hybrid Magazine , World Wide Punk and Punk International and mention on top album lists by sources such as PunkRockReviews. At this point they were satisfied with the level of interest that they were able to generate through informal channels like underground radio, internet and friends they'd made while playing out. They weren't so concerned about competing with popular bands and declined label offers.
Soon the group slowed their touring schedules and began writing the ambitious follow-up " Young for the Last Time ." The songs, which focused on innocence and the limitations placed upon it (in both the personal and political sense), seemed especially appropriate in the wake of 9/11. With their initial dire pessimism subsided, the group put together a masterful tapestry of punk songs united by age old literary themes updated and applied to the postmodern era. Recorded with the help of John Agnello (who has produced for such bands as The Chainsaw Kittens, Son Volt, Sonic Youth, the Breeders, Social Distortion, Dinosaur Jr and more), the lyrical maturity and social understanding rarely found on punk records earned the group a new generation of underground fans.
In 2007, as a commentary regarding the sad state of mainstream punk music, the band decided to release the " Dancing with a Stranger EP ." The songs were hastily recorded in a basement in Queens and an attic in upstate New York. When the band listened back to the recordings, they realized the songs had an ugly and urgent honesty that provided an appropriate contrast to the glossy, highly polished way that modern "mainstream" punk (and all music) is packaged. Though the songs were raw and "ugly", the band knew the songs had to be released.
Listen and enjoy.
