GARDENS

Accompanying the announcement of their debut album Flaws - due for release on 1st November via independent Austrian label Siluh Records - the Vienna quartet this week (30th August) share its surf-psych-inspired title track.

Sitting somewhere between La Luz and Courtney Barnett - and nourished by the crisp blue skies, verdant fields and mountains for which their home country is famed - the track offsets a cool, sun-soaked indie-jangle with the heart-on-sleeve confessionalism of Luca Celina Müller’s lead vocal.

As opening track of their upcoming debut, ‘Flaws’ sets the tone for what’s to come: a sound that’s level-headed and assured - filtering the sublime out of the messiness - yet centred around Luca’s therapeutic process of arduous self-discovery; of getting all her thoughts out onto the page and using that as a springboard acceptance, healing and personal growth: “I’m a keeper of my flaws /All the patterns that I store /Deep inside my mouth /Is where dark treasures can be found /Would you like to find out?” sings it’s refrain.

Discussing the track, lead vocalist Luca Celine Müller states: “Everybody has this side that thinks bad thoughts or wants to be mean to someone. And in this song I don't want this side to overpower me” .

More about GARDENS and Flaws:

Austria is a place of high-altitudes and fittingly, the superb songwriting and musicianship of GARDENS sits at a bird’s eye view, embracing change with uncanny clarity, warmth and self-awareness. But their music is also laced with an acceptance and unravelling of life’s darker currents.

Beneath the elementary but deceptively intricate arrangements, Luca’s savvy songwriting instincts chronicle trials of mental health, the rites of passage of youth and the dizzying fogs of heartbreak, channelling the confrontational confessions of the likes of Courtney Barnett and Julia Jacklin.

And naming your debut album Flaws is a frank admission of fresh scars still in the process of healing, right beneath a diamond-flickering surface: “It’s like writing a diary” Luca says, “Or just writing your thoughts down. That's what everybody tells you; it's what therapists have told me. Just write it down, so it gets out of your head and onto paper. And I think that's what happened with these songs: manically writing lyrics when I was riding the metro, and afterward already feeling lighter because it got a new space. So it doesn't have to live inside my head anymore.”

Meeting in Vienna the quartet of Luca Celine Müller, Peter Benedikt Mathis, Patrick Stieger and Laura Keiblinger gained notoriety through their first two singles ‘Talk’ and ‘Waves’ – the latter getting extensive airplay at Austria’s popular station Radio FM4 – and firmly established their lush blend of indie pop, 60s psych folk and dream pop.