Glow in the Dark Flowers - glow in the dark flowers (2023) Hi-Res

It’s hard to believe it’s been 11 years since Jessee Rose Crane and Philip Lesicko left Chicago for the teeny downstate town of New Douglass, partly because you can still feel their influence in our underground rock scene. With their old duo, the Funs, they’ve played noisy but comforting rock in Chicago venues; they’ve released music by Chicago artists on their Manic Static label; and they’ve recorded plenty of locals at Rose Raft, the rehabbed funeral home they’ve transformed into an arts hub and studio.

Chicago’s Jessee Rose Crane and Philip Lesicko having been making music together for over a decade, the pair coming together to create their own vision of noise-pop and fuzzed out post-punk. Best known as the duo behind The Funs, they released records via Sister Polygon, Maximum Pelt, and their own Manic Static imprints, forging themselves an important place in the history of the cities DIY scene. At some point in the past five years, Crane and Lesicko began to move away from the music they made as The Funs and started Glow In The Dark Flowers, a new project that carries much of the same spirit as their past projects, but with a new found sonic clarity and focus on minimalist details. Set to release their self-titled debut album on April 14th via Born Yesterday Records (Stuck, Lawn, Lifeguard), the band are highlighting the fuzzy pop end of their music without the overwhelming scuzz, operating with a raw jangle reminiscent of Dead Moon or The Jesus and Mary Chain.

Recorded at Rose Raft, the band’s home studio in Southern Illinois where they relocated over a decade ago to escape the expenses of city life, there’s a vibrant quality to the album, every bump and scrape captured and left in real time. They’ve said the sound of The Funs wasn’t by design but necessity, with noisy recordings a result of their makeshift studio, but little feels makeshift about it these days, as Glow In The Dark Flowers has a natural essence to the way it sounds, the production capturing the barebones intimacy of the music, drum machines, wavering distortion and all. “On The Marble,” our first preview of the record is a pop song lurking in the shadows, a song for the rainy days and dreary nights, built on a classic post-punk sound. Guitars chime and echo as the drums keep a peppy beat firmly in place, mixing a sense of romanticism with a surrealist swoon.