Florry was named after a character in Betty Smith’s novel A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, but listening to their fantastically energetic new album Sounds Like…, you wonder if it must also be some kind of arcane verb. Meaning: to jam out with one’s best friends as if the 8:30 p.m. sunlight will never fade. Or: to turn one’s own life into a grand country-rock musical, whose songs are filled with jubilant exclamations and pauses for laughter and applause. The band’s seven members—who first got together in Philly, but are now all over the place—are so in the pocket on their third album that you have to assume that “Florry” is a directive as much as a band name. Like: Let’s florry tonight.
A lot of that exuberance comes courtesy of bandleader Francie Medosch, who has clearly never met a riff she didn’t want to play or a trope she couldn’t make her own. It wasn’t until I read the lyric sheet of Sounds Like… that I even recognized the malaise and discomfort that sits plainly in her songs; her voice is hearty and beseeching, and it often sounds as if she’s singing through a massive grin, like she can’t quite believe her own band is ripping through these flamboyant barnstormers with such joy and ease. When she exclaims that she’d give a film “five out of five” on opener “First it was a movie, then it was a book” (which was not not inspired by Holly Hunter in Broadcast News) you want to hoot and holler along with her… until you properly parse the full phrase: “If I wasn’t feeling so empty, baby, I’d give that movie five out of five!”
These are the parameters of Sounds Like…: Trying to acknowledge life’s inherent, everlasting shittiness—I’m depressed; Holly Hunter didn’t win an Oscar for Broadcast News—while retaining the positivity that formed the core of 2023’s The Holey Bible. Medosch finds her silver linings in parking lots and trips to the movies, in a “barbecue on Valentine’s with my best friend Eli” and the realisation that blasting Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” on repeat might be the only logical response to wondering “why you hate me so much.” Aiding her is a band, and co-production by Colin Miller, that triangulates virtuosically crunchy groups like Dr. Dog with lifelong Dylan standom and the fuck-you sweetness of the early Olympia scene, finding a central point that’s hooky, ramshackle, and boisterous all at once.
Florry’s artful looseness is important: Medosch most often sings about ragged feelings, and scenarios with a raw edge. The loping ballad “You Don’t Know,” seemingly addressed to someone suffering through a bout of depression, zeroes in on a tiny vision of the future (“One of these days, you’re gonna be amazed”) while the terse “Sexy” sandwiches intrusive thoughts about a relationship between a simple affirmation: “Baby’s crazy sexy.”
Despite the open-ended nature of many of her songs, Medosch still sees value in a stitched-up, punch-the-air anthem. “Pretty Eyes Lorraine” follows a simple, well-established rock’n’roll format: The protagonist meets an amazing girl who then shows her the ways of the world. Medosch approaches the idea with a typically laissez-faire attitude—the iconic, howlable hook here is simply “My girl’s got pretty eyes”—but she takes a lesson from her hero Holly Hunter: It’s not about what you’re saying, it’s about how you say it.
