Tomato Flower - Gold Arc/Construction [CD]

Experimental-pop band Tomato Flower’s physical debut combines their first two EPs released over the course of this year with unique artwork merging both album covers into one image. Their debut, Gold Arc, finds the Baltimore quartet playing with tension between sweetness and destructive heaviness. Conceptually, Gold Arc hungers for an alternate reality, a sustainable paradise, and the desire to be loved constantly.

Tomato Flower turns that utopian impulse towards the worldly on the latter half of this CD, Construction. A sister EP to Gold Arc, this set of dense, knotted pop songs are intricate constructions of their own. The music evokes something sculptural, reflecting the painstaking social processes of material transformation that create physical objects, or coalesces as a monumental abstraction cutting into the skyline.

Much of the music came together in the peak days of COVID isolation during long days on the top floor of Austyn Wohlers and Jamison Murphy’s rowhouse, overlooking aging Baltimore architecture. As a group of self-professed psychedelic nerds, the band used this time of uncertainty to stretch the limits of both study and play. The process of composing this music combined a spirit of academic rigor and intense experimentation as they holed up and crafted pristine jewels of rock music.