Florry Makes Music That Sucks The Air Out of Rooms

Stalking the streets of Soho with Francie Medosch, the lead singer of the Philadelphia-based punk band Florry.

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Come through / Girl, they’re asking where you came from / Come through / It’s not easy to come by / It’s not easy to love

8:04 AM: Cold. New York. Mid-December. The last hour drifted. Heavy sky and so-so coffee. Walking. Not really going anywhere. Florry all in my head. Down Thompson. The wells of the trees full of carwash ice from last night’s service at Lupa, Carbone. 

Past the CBD coffee shop. Wait at the lights. Over Houston. The Shrine Church of St. Anthony of Padua sitting there monolithic and ignored. The nativity. “Peace To The World” writ large on the wall. “No Bike Parking” writ smaller on the railings. The holy family and attendant players set in plastic. An empty crib, waiting.

Last Saturday. I saw a girl on the steps over there dressed as a toy bear. She was throwing-up over the pavement. Her friend had one hand on her shoulder, the other hand scrolling. Her thumb liking. She liked every single picture she saw. Every single one. 

I get in and google Florry. It autocorrects to lorry, and I get some articles about trucks. Read about Francie. Find a Bratmobile track she name-checks with an Amazon ad with smiling boxes that autoplays before it. Skip Ad. Skip Ad.

Like a lot of Bandcamp music, Florry’s new album, Brown Bunny, is out of its time. It crackles, restless, like a Steven Malkmus, dissonant like a Raincoats. It hides, mumbling and shy, then snaps like a PJ Harvey. The record comes from a similar place as that Moldy Peaches one. The one they made a so-so-so-so movie out of years later which felt more indebted to the world Moldy Peaches had made between them than the plot of the actual screenplay.

3:00 PM: After eating. After those messages. After listening to Brown Bunny, one listen after the other. After figuring out how to speak to Francie over the internet. 

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RICHARD TURLEY: Can you describe the room you’re sitting in?

FRANCIE MEDOSCH: I’m in my sister’s room, actually, right now. It’s on the top floor of our house. It’s nice. Well, it’s a little cliché of alt–high schoolers, which I guess she kind of was. There’s Arctic Monkeys stuff, a David Lynch article on her dresser, but it’s very cute. I like coming up here a lot. I don’t know, I just like being in different spaces. Just being in the same place all the time, like my room, is not always good for getting the thoughts out there, so I like to come up here. Pretty often actually, and just lie down. I think. She also has a couch, which is nice. The ceiling’s really low. I’m the only one here at the house anymore.

TURLEY: Florry makes music that sucks the air out of rooms. Makes the walls come in on you, the space get smaller. It’s forever backing away from you, every time you close in, it seems further away. It mumbles and slides and drags and hides. 

MEDOSCH: About half the album is songs I wrote before I had been playing in a band, and then the other half are songs I wrote after playing in a band, so there’s a difference in the way I wrote them. Some of the songs I wrote for guitar, and then we added in drums and bass later. Other songs I wrote specifically to have drums and bass and all that stuff. We started recording it in December 2016, for an album that we thought we were gonna put out, but only ended up using one of the songs, which is “KFG.”

TURLEY: That’s my favorite on the album.

MEDOSCH: “KFG” was recorded in our drummer’s basement. We recorded the basic backing tracks there. Vocals, acoustic guitar, the pedal steel, we recorded near where I live and my old bassist’s house. The rest I recorded with friends. A lot of these songs were fleshed-out, maybe half of them, while I was staying in New York. “Period” was written at my old bassist’s house in Crown Heights.

TURLEY: Do you hear pieces of your life coming back to you when you listen to your music?

MEDOSCH: Yeah. I think a lot of my music feels that way.

TURLEY: Who do you write your songs for?

MEDOSCH: think some of them are toward the general population, some songs are toward specific people, and then some songs are just for me, I think. “KFG” is one of those songs, a song that’s basically meant for me.

TURLEY: Asking yourself to come through?

MEDOSCH: Yeah, asking myself to move on from stuff. “Please” is mostly about frustration, and how frustration can actually turn to hatred and feeling like a hatred for society, hating the world. It’s just part of acknowledging that not everyone is gonna feel good no matter how much people try to be nice to you. Intention is always very different from the impact I think.

9:45 PM: After. Later. Hiding from a party I’m supposed to go to. Skip ad. People you’re supposed to want to talk to. Taking about how well we’re all doing. Skip ad. Playing music you’re supposed to want to dance to. Skip ad. Past the people crammed in Lupa, Carbone. Who even goes to these places anymore? Plastic people shoulder to shoulder, liking, liking, liking. Drifting, waiting, coming through. 

I’m a such bloody mess / I’m such a fucking mess

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Brown Bunny is out now on Sister Polygon