⚡️💥 VIDEO PREMIERE: "Police Me"
Plus An Interview With Noah Green Of The Pretty Flowers
“Now that I’m evil. Now That I’m stuck.”
Those are the relatable opening lines to “Police Me,” the latest single from LA-based indie pop quartet The Pretty Flowers. The track was originally recorded for their impressive 2023 LP A Company Sleeve, but ultimately left off that collection.
“As a result of it being an older song, the point of view felt too different from the batch of songs on ACS,” vocalist/guitarist Noah Green told me for the interview below. The band’s line up also features Jake Gideon (guitar/vocals/keyboards), Sean Christopher Johnson (drums/percussion), and Sam Tiger (bass /vocals).
“Where the ACS themes were often about the sometimes comfortable, but personal disappointment that comes with having an office job and feeling controlled by people who are given arbitrary authority over you, ‘Police Me’ is more about feeling like an alien in the world and not being able to connect,” Green said.
⚡️💥 VIDEO PREMIERE: "Police Me"
Sonically, this hard-driving song exists in the sweet spot between late ‘80s REM and guitar-era Radiohead, coupled with cryptic, contemplative lyrics worthy of both bands.
“To me, ‘Don’t police me, I can police myself,’ touches on the idea that I personally feel like I don’t need to be policed because I live in a way that I feel is ethically and morally correct,” Green said. “And, yet, another person, whom I could completely despise and disagree with, could also say the exact same thing about the way they live their life, and feel just as right about themselves as I do.”
I connected with Green by email as the band prepares to release the new single digitally and on a limited-edition flexi-disc, gets ready for shows at SXSW followed by a West Coast run with Gentlemen Rogues and The Spires, and launches a new Substack newsletter—all while putting the finishing touches on their next album.
Noah Green Interview
I’m very excited to premiere the “Police Me” video. Can you tell me a little about how the song came together?
Noah Green: Thanks! Yeah, we wrote the song some years back. I thought we had written it in 2018, but seeing a live video of it on youtube today made me realize the song was actually kicking around in 2016. The arrangement was a little different and the tempo slower, but for the most part is the same.
Our drummer, Sean, wasn't in the band when the song was written and he’d never heard a live or recorded version of it before we played it with this current version of the band, so he developed the drum part in his own style. It’s also in drop-D tuning and it’s the only song in our catalog like that.
I remember writing it on an acoustic guitar and thinking it was going to be like a woody acoustic guitar Wilco-sounding song, or some kind of Wowee Zowee-era Pavement song, but it ended up having a much different feel from either of those in the end. On the recording now there’s a 12-string guitar doubling the main riff that really sweetens and jangles up the sound.
You mentioned that it was originally recorded for your last album A Company Sleeve, but ultimately left off. Why was that?
Noah Green: It’s one of those songs that we’ve kept on the back burner. It was the first song we wrote after we finished the tracking for Why Trains Crash. We finally got around to recording it during the first session for A Company Sleeve with Adam Lasus at Studio Red. Once we had all the songs recorded and mixed it felt off to me thematically with the rest of the album.
If we didn’t do something with the track now, it might have fallen to the wayside. So, we decided to put it out as a single, digitally and as a limited edition flexi-disc.
I get the feeling most music fans have no idea how fraught song selection and track order can be for bands. What approach does The Pretty Flowers generally take? Is the band a Democracy?
Noah Green: In general, there's a lot of respect for one another within the band and what we all bring to the songs individually. I think compared to most bands we’re an extremely functional Democracy, with the four of us going on six years together.
In terms of song selection, we had a lot of time during 2022 to mix the album and figure out the track listing because we didn’t have a label or anyone pushing for an album from us. We’d been working on the album on and off since the end of 2019, and I think we just felt like we were too close to the thing to have the clearest view of the track listing. We had come to a basic agreement on what we wanted the track listing to be within the band, with a few track list variations. We were, of course, thinking of it as an LP and wanted to have the first and last songs on each side be just right, so the most discussion within the band was around that.
We wound up sharing the 14 songs we had recorded with some close friends to come up with their favorite track listing, with some of those friends wanting “Police Me” to be included, others saying ten-track albums are the best albums. We really did consider all of the feedback, but the 12 tracks and order of A Company Sleeve ended up being close to, if not one of, the band-curated variations.
I'm a sucker for the grandiose opening to "Police Me" and the call back/turnaround after the first chorus. Was that always part of the song or something that developed over time?
Noah Green: That’s cool to hear, thanks. The opening riff was the part of the song that everything else came out of. In the old live video of us playing “Police Me” the turnaround is extended, but I think it was a good idea to cut it down for the recording. Whoever in the band suggested doing that, good call.
Do you guys play this one live?
We played it live at The Sardine earlier this month for the first time in a long time and it felt good to play. Because we haven’t played it live in a while I forgot to tune back up from drop-D for the next song, though.
We’re going to be playing it at some upcoming shows, for sure.
Walter Chaw wrote an impressive ode to you guys for Remember The Lightning: A Guitar Pop Journal. This is a great line:
"A Company Sleeve is about the lies that are told to us about what it means to be successful: a job, a house and two-and-a half kids and a wife, a college degree, exterior proofs of success."
What did you think when you first read that? Was he right?
Noah Green: Walter is really kind for writing that piece and it was super flattering to read. We are admirers of his film reviews and his unabashed love and enthusiasm for different forms of art and makers. He got what he got out of the album and I think that’s all I could ask for, someone to relate to it and find something to hold onto in the songs.
What Walter wrote about is definitely part of that theme of dissatisfaction with the hand you’ve been dealt in life and feeling like you don’t have much control over your own destiny. The lyrics are personal to me, but just with how I tend to write, they’re not necessarily direct, so how anyone decides to interpret things as they see them is fine by me.
I heard you guys are playing SXSW this year. Where can people find you?
Noah Green: In previous years The Pretty Flowers have coincidentally booked west coast tours around SXSW, but this year we are flying in and out because we were invited to play a couple parties.
They still haven’t announced the lineups for the shows we’re on, but I know we’re playing with our label mates and pals Near Beer for a couple shows at The Side Bar, which we’re excited about. Joey from Near Beer and I were in a band together for a while called The Henry Clay People, and the last time we were at SXSW together was a million years ago with that band.
Any shows coming up after SXSW?
We’re playing four shows in March with the Austin band Gentlemen Rogues, who just put out a really good record on our label, Double Helix. We have shows with them at:
Mar. 22—Deer Lodge, Ojai w/ The Spires
Mar. 23—Permanent Records Roadhouse, LA w/ Gentlemen Rogues, The Spires
Mar. 24—4th St. Vine, Long Beach w/ Gentlemen Rogues, Sweet Nobody
Mar. 29—Polecat Tavern, Carson City w/ Gentlemen Rogues, Cavour
Mar. 30—Red Dwarf, Las Vegas w/ Gentlemen Rogues, Crom Fallon and the P200
There are some really good bands joining on those bills with us, like The Spires from Ventura and Sweet Nobody from Long Beach. We were invited to play a festival in the midwest in June, which we’re excited about, but we can’t announce that one yet.
What's next for The Pretty Flowers ?
Noah Green: Lots of stuff, actually. In an effort to keep track of band things we started a Substack of our own called Agendaless and we’ve sent a couple newsletters out so far. That’s been kinda fun to do.
In December we recorded a bunch of new songs for our next album at this amazing house in Laguna Beach that I have family connections to and they let us have the run of the place for a long weekend. The Pretty Flowers guitarist Jake brought his whole home studio out there and we got some great sounding bass and drums tracked. We also got to record everything with a view of the ocean.
My friend Scott McDowell, who I’ve known since high school, is an engineer and producer at Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco and he came out for the weekend to assist Jake with the recording, too. We still need to record a few more songs to make a full-length LP, but we made good progress on a big chunk of it and we’re excited about the new songs.
Remember The Lightning—A Guitar Pop Journal, Vol. 2
The second volume of our semi-annual music journal featuring some of today's best music writers and talented modern artists on the music/genres that inspire them.
Very cool to have a video premier here- nice stuff!
Great song!