As I was listening to The Pretty Flowers’ new album Never Felt Bitter, I got thinking about the world as it was forty years ago, not too much before I was born. During the Reagan era, the “greed is good” mentality caused people to crave the idea of “more”, a warped American Dream that catered to materialism and a false sense of spirituality. Megachurches rose to fame in the blueprint of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, shows like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous highlighted the big homes who lived in glitz and glamour, and the stock market and private industry bloomed with thanks to the American federal government, who left most common folks to rot.
And so common folks – mostly the younger ones – sought their own version of “more”. For some, it was through connections: Punk subcultures, underground movements, fledgling LGBTQ+ communities. Or it was moving to the cities their parents left behind for the crowded suburbs, or to the vast countryside, which the invisible hand of capitalism had left untouched.
Here in the big 2-6, the sentiment remains the same: Young folks feel cramped and anxious, with the government putting money in their pockets while leaving everyone else without a foreseeable future. And so instead of caving to the pressure of capitulation, they’re finding their own way forward. It’s the sentiment The Pretty Flowers injected into Never Felt Bitter: Healing from society’s bruises and finding space to grow, to build a comfortable life, one that’s worth living.
The genesis of Never Felt Bitter – The Pretty Flowers’ third LP – came about when vocalist/guitarist Noah Green moved from his cramped apartment in LA’s Koreatown to a house in the Sierra Madre foothills. Trading city noise and chaos for sleepy town silence, Green found the space to write the second half of what would become this album, one full of big, soaring sounds soaked in the atmosphere of the San Gabriel mountains. From there, Green got the rest of the band together – Sam Tiger (bass/vox), Jake Gideon (guitars/vox/production), and Sean Christopher Johnson (drums/percussion) – to put the wheels in motion.
The four members of The Pretty Flowers – like most indie bands these days – have day jobs. In These Tough Economic Times™, becoming a full-time musician has become less of a steady career than ever, unless you have serious connections. Then again, nothing seems like a steady career nowadays, and making music (or any art) seems like the last defense against a world going off the rails and catering to the uber-elite. Thus, the energy behind the first song Green wrote for the record, “Came Back Kicking”:
“And you can take it apart or you can blow it up
Either way, don’t let it eat you up
Sucked you in to get a better look
And you came back kicking”
The track stemmed from Green pondering his own personal idea of “big music”, songs that in his words “make you feel connected to something larger”. Moving to the mountains, making music with the band: These things cater to crafting a big sound. And when that sound echoes, it might reach a few extra ears. For instance, the band performed the album’s first track “Thief of Time” in April 2025 on the steps of LA City Hall as part of the 50501 protests against rising American authoritarianism. The bridge emphasizes the importance of keeping with community, even when times get tough:
“I’ve been here before and back again
Again to feel a little worse
Bring the boys around to draw a ring
Around the waiting hearse
Again to feel a little worse”
The powerful punk anti-authority sound makes up just one color of the palette The Pretty Flowers used to paint Never Felt Bitter. “Ring True” roars with industrial shoegaze fuzz that warps toward the end, much like how authority figures or abusive figures warp the truth to fit their agendas. “Safe&Secure” brings in some Midwestern emo elements, “Feel a Little Vague” has some shuffle pop and samba mixed in to symbolize delirium. And the final track, “Not Dissolve”, slows things down with folk vibes that sound like setting up camp after a long day of escaping society’s expectations of what “success” means:
“Feels like the blood pressure of the world is high
Everyday I wonder wonder why
Nothing’s the same it’s changed so much
We’re broke down on a moving bus
I’ll tribute you and carve your name in stone”
Every part of the production of Never Felt Bitter involved the idea of vastness, with everyone learning in that “big sound” ethos. The Pretty Flowers began recording the album in a borrowed house in the hills of Laguna Beach, setting up their gear in a circular living room with a view of the Pacific Ocean. The band wasted no effort or time working to make the sound of the record as big as the waters before them. Once they had the songs in a solid state, they wrapped up the sessions at Adam Lasus’s Studio Red in North Hollywood to try and wrestle that massive sound into a master.
The result: A sprawling effort where every band member’s contributions come together in just the right configuration, making the four of them sound much grander than the sum of their parts. The urgency of the musical and lyrical ideas on “To Be So Cool” call forth the masses, emphasizing the importance of holding together with other people to put things together when they fall apart:
“I want a proof of life, a proof of plastic
Plastic bones that felt elastic
And plastic bones they break
Just like any other
Brittle things, we’ll put them back
Together”
The word “together” has double meaning there: It could either relate to the bones (or any possession, connection, or part of society) themselves needing repair, or it could relate to the collaboration of putting something back together. On Never Felt Bitter, The Pretty Flowers aren’t just commenting that the world needs fixing: They’re stating that we’ve got to fix it with one another.
Perhaps the most striking piece of collaboration comes on the track “Convent Walls”, the sixth on Never Felt Bitter. The Pretty Flowers got help from Joy Deyo, friend and member of the Long Beach band Sweet Nobody (who we covered back in November!), to provide her vocals. On the track, the band plus Joy sing of the exhilaration of escape, scraping the ivy with reckless abandon in search of something bigger and brighter than the trappings of the titular convent walls. In that place, a symbol of the authoritarian state, only the crushing machines and strict enforcers existed to bleed any sense of personality out of the populace, on which the elite would feast. But escape means a chance to search for the self, and – at the same time – search for community and hope.
There’s a reason the cruelest eras of history weren’t able to totally break the spirits of those who survived it, and why the spirits of those who didn’t make it still live on. It’s because like the big sound of Never Felt Bitter, everyone worked together to sound bigger than the sum of their parts. And while victory hasn’t come quite yet, having a strong community and holding on to it in these horrifying times feels like a win. At the very least, it feels sweet.
Take a listen to Never Felt Bitter below, and support The Pretty Flowers through their Bandcamp and following their socials.
Written by Will Sisskind
