Lucky Number Music

Sunflower Bean will release their transformative new album Mortal Primetime this Friday, April 25th. They have already shared early singles “Champagne Taste” and “Nothing Romantic,” and today they share one final preview that shows another side of the record. A powerful and searing track about personal experiences with being groomed, “There’s a Part I Can’t Get Back” finds Julia Cumming “as intentional and direct as possible,” as she grapples with what she encountered. Central to the themes of the record, the video for “There’s a Part I Can’t Get Back” finds all three members of Sunflower Bean supporting one another as they fight to regain their footing. Listen to the song and watch the moving video from Harv Frost now below.

Cumming explains of the track: “This song is about the lasting scars of grooming—the parts of yourself that are stolen and the anger you carry because of it. It came to me in such a raw and direct way, there was no second-guessing or wondering how I felt. I didn’t want to write a song about being healed, I wanted to be angry about needing to heal at all. The line, ‘If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord lets me get even first,’ is important because it captures the intensity of these feelings and how they go beyond logic. I am confronting the pain and the questions that will never be answered.”

Sunflower Bean are known for their blistering live show, and will return to the UK next week to celebrate the release of their album with in-stores for Resident in Brighton, Rough Trade and Banquet in London, and dates in Liverpool and Leeds. This Spring, their US headline tour in support of Mortal Primetime begins, including a hometown show at Warsaw in Brooklyn. All live dates and ticket links are available on the band’s website.

Sunflower Bean today share their new single today entitled “Nothing Romantic”, a soaring second preview of their transformative new album Mortal Primetime, out April 25th.

While the album’s first single “Champagne Taste” found Julia Cumming channelling Iggy Pop, “Nothing Romantic” features power cords that harken back to arena-ready hits of the ‘70s and ‘80s by Heart, Pat Benatar, or Joan Jett, with piano from Roger Joseph Manning Jr. (co-founder of legendary power-pop band Jellyfish).

“‘Nothing Romantic’ is about rejecting the myth of the tortured artist—realizing that the joys of creativity don’t have to come from the lows of misery,” the band explains. “The video mirrors this journey, capturing our lives as touring musicians in between nightmarish performances. From green rooms to lost highways, we travel from town to town, feeling alive only in the escape of our show. There’s tension between the connection and solitude; on stage, we’re together, sharing our music with others but later isolation and the price of our sacrifices creep in.”

Listen to the new single & watch its incredible Sophia Feuer & Tyler Macri directed music video below:

Beloved rock band Sunflower Bean return reinvigorated with the most hard-fought and vulnerable album of their career: Mortal Primetime. In the three years since their last LP Headful of Sugar, the members of Sunflower Bean drifted from one another as they pursued new projects and confronted personal challenges, tragedies and transformations. But Mortal Primetime – the band’s fourth album, but first self-produced – finds Sunflower Bean with a renewed sense of purpose after nearly losing everything they built together. “You get to decide what your prime is, and you fight for it,” bassist and vocalist Julia Cumming says. “This is ours, and that can’t be taken away by circumstance. We can’t take it away from each other. This moment, where we are now, is what we’ve always fought for.” With mixing by Caesar Edmunds (The Killers, Wet Leg) and engineering by Sarah Tudzin (Illuminati Hotties, Boygenius), Sunflower Bean were inspired by alternative rock, dreamy psychedelia, and arena-sized ambition to create a sound that’s undeniably theirs on Mortal Primetime; a record that celebrates their history while hurtling toward the future.

The first single off of Mortal Primetime is “Champagne Taste”, a fuzzed-out anthem of reckless determination. A nod to Sunflower Bean’s long-time alias when performing secret shows to test out new material, “Champagne Taste” features feral guitar riffs, soaring power chords and vocals that find Cumming channeling Iggy Pop circa The Idiot. The band explains, “This song came after a period that felt like rock bottom for the band. It is about feeling beaten down but still driving forward, to keep faith, to grow and to continue to create on our own terms, our Mortal Primetime.” Listen to “Champagne Taste” now, and watch the Isaac Roberts-directed music video below:

Sunflower Bean are known for their blistering live show, which has graced the stages of countless festivals like Glastonbury and Lollapalooza, to tours with Beck, Interpol, and The Pixies, and sold-out international headline shows. So the band is wasting no time in celebrating Mortal Primetime on the road, and have announced a massive North American tour. This follows on from next month’s UK/EU tour supporting Cage The Elephant, as well as a special intimate headline show at The George Tavern in London on February 27th. Head to their website to find a show near you and get your tickets when general on-sale starts Friday 31st January at 10am locally.

Our New York trio Sunflower Bean, vocalist and bassist Julia Cumming (she/her), guitarist and vocalist Nick Kivlen (he/him), and drummer Olive Faber (she/her), have released their first fully self-produced and recorded project, SHAKE, today. The EP features some of Sunflower Bean’s heaviest, most immediate and loudest music to date. Influenced by the doom-laden, heavy metal sound of the likes of Black Sabbath, the EP is an embrace of rock tropes and excess, and recalls the sound of the band’s earlier projects, Show Me Your Seven Secrets and Human Ceremony.

Out alongside the release of the EP, is a 14-minute performance based video to showcase each track via an interpretation of the natural elements: earth, wind, water, fire, and metal. The short film debuted at a special event at NYC’s Roxy Cinema earlier this week, which featured a Q&A with the band and the film’s director Isaac Roberts, as well as a viewing of the cult 1975 Dario Argento film, Deep Red. Watch the SHAKE short film in its entirety above now, and read more about it via Rolling Stone.

New York trio Sunflower Bean have shared the second slice of their first fully self-produced and recorded project, Shake. The EP, which will be released on September 27th, has already been praised for its grungy, return-to-roots sound, following the release of its title track. Today, the band doubles down on this exciting direction with new single “Teach Me To Be Bad”. A song, the band explain, about how “a chance meeting with a special person can change your life forever. It can be exhilarating and frightening to fall madly for someone you barely know.”

The music videos for “Teach Me To Be Bad” and “Shake” are part of a 14-minute performance based video to showcase each track via an interpretation of the natural elements: earth, wind, water, fire, and metal. Sunflower Bean have also announced an exclusive premiere of that short film at Roxy Cinema in NYC on September 25th. The event will include a premiere of the full video, Q&A with the band and director Isaac Roberts, as well as a screening of the cult 1975 Dario Argento film, Deep Red. Tickets are available now.