Everyone’s favourite anxiety-pop band have only gone and done it! flirting.’s debut EP ‘This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me’ has finally dropped, and, obviously, it bangs.
A complete evolution from the yearning shoegaze of yore, the EP captures the London five-piece at an interesting point; willing to experiment, yet totally not devoid of sing along anthems. Lead single ‘Peppermint’ is all dream pop guitar melodies, dual spoken word vocals that know how to take the necessary paths to justify a full cathartic release at the end. Of the track, singer Poppy Waring said, ‘‘I wanted the track to mark a movement away from the more melancholy mood of our earliest tracks. For me, it’s a sort of mantra for getting through things, for shouting ‘NO’ at the world and surviving all the rubbish that it throws at you.”
Opening track ‘Yum’ similarly builds to a point of wall-of-sound guitars, with Waring reeling off utterly relatable feelings of anxiety, in a heavy moment.
‘Lilac’ is almost post-rock in its lofty atmospherics, and is frequently utterly tender and beautiful, while closer ‘In The Dark’ is a subdued experiment in electronics and tape music, and represents one of the best things about this EP; as much as the band have clearly evolved from their beginnings, this still feels like a transitional period. Even better things are definitely yet to happen.
This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me is available on tape through Hidden Bay Records, here, or alternatively on mp3 via flirting.’s Bandcamp page, here.
