One Hundred Flowers

Mechanical Bride (Stem and Leaf)

By Emily Becker
Published: November 9th, 2010 | 7:19am

Austin quintet One Hundred Flowers debuts a range of moody, multilayered compositions on Mechanical Bride. The band—which now includes Eva Mueller on keys and big yellow drum, Amber Nepodal on the piano and trumpet, Gary Calhoun James on bass, and Curtis Henderson on drums and woodblock—grew out of singer-guitarist Harrison Speck’s desire to play his songs in a venue larger than his bedroom. After the group learned Speck’s songs from the EP Some Summer Falls, they collaborated to write Mechanical Bride.

Whether tackling epic anthems (“Rat Trap,” “Three Dresses”) or ballads (“You Must Really Accept,” “Shadow Show”), Speck’s voice has a light and gentle quality similar to Andrew Bird’s that contrasts the baroque structures which he and his bandmates create. This contrast between vocals and instrumentation gives Mechanical Bride vulnerability and ensures the individual tracks never become overwrought, no matter how many elements are simultaneously in play.

One Hundred Flowers have mastered tempo shifts, so it’s hard to pin down the style of a particular track as all five members work together to move a song through various phases. Though the approach they may take in a given moment is fleeting, joy and exuberance leak through the seams of their musical architecture. The album melds groove and melody into a multi-layered entity capable of invoking broad memories like “love” and “sleep” as well as very specific ones like “cute vintage dresses” and “dusty spectacles.”

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One Hundred Flowers official site

One Hundred Flowers MySpace page

Stem and Leaf Records