Right from the titular opening salvo, you realise that Flavor Wave is anything but your average alt-rock band. Anyone can write songs that are big and punchy, that rely on volume and velocity—the rock’ n’ roll highway is already littered with an abundance of those. What makes this band stand out is the artistry with which they weave funk and soul into the DNA of riff-driven rock songs, creating music that grooves as hard as it grinds.
Lonely Animals, their sophomore album, is the sound of a band moving onwards and upwards both musically and personally. You can hear it in the way they balance turn-of-the-millennium alt-rock textures with supple funk rhythms and use that as a delivery system for from-the-heart storytelling. This is a record that flexes muscle and opens its heart in equal measure.
Take “Outlaws”, which pushes along on a slinky, infectious stacatto groove before opening up into soaring, blues-drenched guitar work. Or “Motivation”, where the band finds that sweet collision point between soul and funk, rock and pop—blurring generic demarcations without losing one ounce of momentum. Then there’s “Tuesday”, a song that’s as lyrically sharp as it is musically inventive: a meditation on the daily grind of life’s rat race wrapped in lilting, soulful pop that occasionally explodes into walls of squalling guitar.
With Lonely Animals, we find Flavor Wave in spectacular form, one not only keen to show off their chops, of which they are in possession of more than a modest sized butchers, but also signposting their upward progress and intriguing direction of travel. This is a band building songs that are as timeless as they are of-the-moment, and in doing so, they’re carving out a space in the alt-rock scene that feels genuinely their own.
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