NEW ALBUMS
PETER MATTHEW BAUER
Flowers FORTUNETELLERS
7/10
Former Walkman addresses his past on solo third
A childhood friend’s death and the dread he felt in pandemic LA sent Bauer tumbling back into a youth spent in cult ashrams, and not unacquainted with fear. The Walkmen’s drummer Matt Barrick was enlisted in the latter stages of this initially solo recording, and Bauer’s high, dreamy vocal has some of Hamilton Leithauser’s stressed ecstasy. The difficult nostalgia of “Miracles” mixes acoustic strums and mariachi brass fanfares, envisioning stoner kids walking a railway bridge as the old century and friendships ended, a past Bauer now loses faith in, “like it never was”. Seething and obscurely haunted, Flowers also seems, like several records right now, post-apocalyptic.