Based on the south-coast of England in the city of Portsmouth, FLOWVERS is the four-piece indie rock band making it big this year. What began in 2016 as a creative project between a group of friends at school has since grown into something huge. “We all knew we wanted to make music,” they say, “it just made sense to get together and try it out.” With Matisse Moretti on vocals, Connor Griffiths on drums, Stan Powell on guitar and Henry Wood on bass, FLOWVERS aims to express the raw and individual creativity of all the band, capturing care-free energies in their tracks and turning dreams into a reality. “Making music together is all we want to do,” the band says, “putting out something that reflects us and is something that we’re all proud of is such a good feeling.”
In 2018, the band released their first track ‘Fresh Air’, amassing over 500,000 plays on Spotify. Since then, FLOWVERS have continued to grow, releasing three more singles, supporting bands such as JAWS, Swim Deep and Luna Bay whilst also headlining their own gigs, and selling out venues. In 2020, the band released their debut EP Throwaway Generation, and then began touring until the pandemic cut it short. Now, nearly a year later, Matisse, Connor, Stan and Henry are continuing their UK tour post-covid, and have been working hard on making new music, developing their sound and growing together as a band.
Sheesh Magazine chatted with FLOWVERS about new music, life in lockdown and future plans for the band….
Q: Who or what inspires your sound?
FLOWVERS: We don’t really have anyone who inspires our sound in general. We just vibe off each other as a whole and take inspiration from what the others in the band are thinking. Our sound is kind of an eclectic mix with subtle impacts and influences from other artists we love, but overall, it’s just our music and our ideas which pay homage to a lot of other sounds.
Q: What does it mean to you to put music out into the world?
FLOWVERS: We always wanted to be musicians and when we met as friends, we formed the band. It was all really natural and fun, and for us, putting music out together is exciting. When we released Fresh Air we were still in our early stages of making music together and we’ve moved away from that now as our sound has matured alongside us growing up. Over lockdown we’ve definitely grown. It was good for us and enabled us to be stronger as a band. Performing live is fun and sometimes we change our songs slightly which is something we’re not scared to do
Q: What have you been up to recently?
FLOWVERS: Recently, we’ve just sort of had a fresh start as a band. Over the last year or so of going in and out of lockdown, we all had time to think about the direction we want to go in together, and now we’re rebranding, making it all natural and open. Since lockdown eased, though, we’ve been rehearsing a lot but also just hanging out together now that we’re allowed to, which has been great.
Q: Do you have a favourite part of the songwriting or creative process?
FLOWVERS: I think we all have different parts which we love, but for the most part, just being together and creating something we all feel good about is important. For Stan, the best part of the creative process is being able to lose yourself in the music that you make. For Henry, it’s that rehearsal after coming up with a new song where you see everything come together and things feel exciting, and for Connor, the best part of the creative process is the laid back, natural and relaxed approach we take to music. Nothing is forced and if we don’t like a sound that we were working on then we just move on and other stuff becomes its own thing naturally. We don’t continue on songs unless we genuinely like them. For Matisse, the spontaneity of making music is the best part of the song writing process. It’s like those moments of magic when something just clicks. Stan will make some noise on his guitar and we’ll put it on a loop and just go from there. It’s fun making things we all love without too strict a guideline to follow.
Q: Plans for the future of FLOWVERS?
FLOWVERS: This past year or so has been a bit strange due to everything going on in the world. We’re continuing our tour from before in October which is like a year and a half late but it’s exciting to finally be getting out and getting a new set list going. We’ve really enjoyed rebranding and we’ve got some new photos by Indy Brewer which we love. It’s natural for us to grow as a band, since we wrote most of the songs on our Spotify when we were sixteen, and we’ve grown up individually too since then. Over the first lockdown we started putting out virtual demos of our tracks before releasing them on Spotify. It’s something we actually learnt from another band and we think it’s the way to go when releasing new music. Mostly, I guess we’re all just really excited to get out and play our new music on tour.
Stream FLOWVERS single “Far Away” on Spotify and Apple Music. Keep up with the band by following on Instagram.
