FLORRY - Big Fall LP

Highly recommended.

Gram Parsons coined the phrase "Cosmic American Music" to describe the synthesis of country, blues, rock and soul that he traded in. Sheridan Frances Medosch wouldn’t be born for another 28 years after Parsons’ 1973 death, but that Cosmic American sound was waiting for her all the same. On 'Big Fall', she embraces it like an old friend.

Her mom played all kinds of stuff around the house, but mostly alt-country like Gillian Welch and Wilco. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot became formative to a young Francie’s love of music.

As a teenager she got into obscure underground rock and power pop, influences she channeled in the band she initially named Francie Cool, which would later transition into Florry.

There’s a clear split between old songs - dark, sad, confused - and new - self-assured, fun, free. Opener ‘You Don’t Know’ was last to be written, and the one that Medosch feels most accurately captured the spirit of Cosmic American Music. It’s a Neil Young-indebted, pedal steel-adorned country tune, the melody of which was born from a dream she had about the Staple Singers. She addresses a loved one who is “fucking their life up”: "You don’t know what you’re doing / And you’re hurting so many people".

Medosch channels traditional country with the honky-tonk piano of "Say Your Prayers" and the rollicking bassline of the title track "Big Fall". On both, she is full of optimism, claiming the idea of a joyful future with exuberance. These are the record’s lightest moments; its heaviest are the Elliott Smith-esque ‘Dream Diary/Growth’ and the slowcore closing track ‘Lovely’, where Medosch conducts a bitter post-mortem on a toxic friendship, singing despairingly: ‘When you tell me to quit being so loud, I will / When you tell me to quit being myself, I will”. It ends the album by “collapsing in on itself”, with a sudden compressed crunch followed by interlocking guitars that spiral towards the song’s conclusion like they’re circling a drain.