Today, Wildflower are sharing the second single off their sophomore record, the breezy, sunsoaked “Golden”.

Their new album, entitled The Ocean Rose, finds the band reflecting on the winding path that brought them to their current home in Maine, and soberly reflecting on climate change.

Frontman and primary songwriter Adrian O’Barr explains the song is a love song to California, a state that holds special significance for the coastal band.

“It is hard to make soft rock and roll without relating to California in some way,” explains O’Barr, whose father grew up in LA, and mother had family in Santa Barbara. Growing up, he always thought he’d end up in the Golden state, and recalls a formative bike tour in his 20’s that took him up the coast in search of a home.

Though he eventually settled in Maine, that trip out West was formative, and the first half of the new album is a nostalgic fever dream, recalling, “the cliffs of Big Sur, to the streets of San Francisco, and canyons of LA, each landscape revealing something unexpected.”

The vivid lyricism on “Golden”, and O’Barr’s airy voice invoke comparisons to Laurel Canyon greats, sounding distinctly like Neil Young as he remembers his “hair still long and blowing, in that warm pacific breeze.”

While the group’s first album was recorded piecemeal and over a longer period of time, The Ocean Rose was made in the span of a week, the band now firing on all cylinders.

“We wanted the process to reflect the growth of our relationships as an ensemble and the music to feel extra present,” he says, and it’s evident in the previews the group have shared. Their previous single “Greetings from California” features flourishes of horns and sax, the earthy acoustic guitar and crisp drums tethering the song to earth even as it threatens to drift away.

The music here is wide open, much like the landscapes O’Barr invokes with his lyrics, and there’s a reverent awe for nature despite the creeping dread of looming climate change that permeates the record.

“The warming and wet winters, the smoke from the West coloring our sunsets back East, all of it worked its way into widening the scope of the songs,” he explains, “I wanted to continue writing about the confluence of memory and the present, but in a way that highlighted the preciousness and precariousness of our time here.”

O’Barr spends the latter half of the album reflecting on his life in Maine, the incredible natural beauty and the imminent danger of rising temperatures. Sonically, he shares that the band indeed has a deep fondness for the sounds of LA in the ’70s, citing Young and Jackson Browne as touchstones, and the coastal music from the British Isles around the same time.

Old films were also a source of inspiration, “My lyrics are really visual and seek to be transportive, both in time and place, and I began to think of my lines as shots as I worked not the album,” O’Barr says, “I wanted to write songs that made people feel like the films I was watching made me feel, if that makes sense.”

With another beautiful offering from their new album, it’s evident that Wildflower are honing in on their own coastal sound, and giving the West Coast a run for their money.

Their new album is out in just over a month on Nightblooms Records, whose catalog includes albums by Real Estate member Alex Bleeker, and Hand Habits collaborator Kacey Johansing.

“Whatever the future brings, we will be here in Maine making our art,” says O’Barr, looking forward to a handful of local performances, and dreaming about taking the album to more distant vistas.

The Ocean Rose is expected via Nightbloom Records on September 10th.

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