Track listing: Electro Hippies, My Bloody Kisses (Slow, Deep, and Reverbed), Comatoast
Ebow-centric--if that's even the correct sound blasting from the studio speakers--is what I envision as I absorb Flowers for Juno's latest single, "Electro Hippies" (with B-sides: "My Bloody Kisses (Slow, Deep, and Reverbed)" and "Comatoast"). "Electro Hippies" unrelentingly pounds and thrashes its slow-tempo'd momentum through the heart of FFJ's trademark spacey, ethereal sonic backdrop--the single visually accompanied by the familiar pink-scale imagery and symbology.
Benjó James delivers another of his crypto-gothic vocal performances on "Electro Hippies," both eerie and ominous in their digitally-processed and reverbified lyrical pleading and explicating. As the single's Act 1 comes to a close, "My Bloody Kisses (Slow, Deep, and Reverbed)" emerges as a fascinating reinterpretation rather than a distinctly separate composition. Taking the same musical and vocal foundation as "Electro Hippies," James slows the track's tempo and submerges it beneath layers of reverb and atmosphere, transforming familiar melodies and vocals into something dreamlike and disorienting. What initially felt (to me) like an instrumental drift through a sea of distortion ultimately reveals itself as a ghostly reflection of the opening track, its vocals stretched and blended into the surrounding sonic haze.
"Comatoast" dredges and scrapes itself together from the depths of James' non-verbal psyche. The guttural opening sounds build into a mass of guitars and synthesizers establishing a chordal structure, anthemic in its presence across the entire human-audible spectrum of sound. The song is the single's second instrumental, ebbing and flowing as an all-encompassing audio wave that rises and subsides over the track's 4 minutes.
The entire concept arrived and was completed post-haste. James explains, "It was my birthday the day before I released this, and I wanted to do something completely fresh and more guitar based. I put some loops down, pressed record and jammed it out." The fact that "My Bloody Kisses" repurposes and reimagines the title track only further underscores the project's immediacy and experimental spirit. He then released it the following day.
Such is the pace of Benjó's frenetic pace of writing, recording, and releasing--nine separate releases on Spotify thus far in 2026 alone! You're either going to latch on to Flowers for Juno's sound, or you're not. For those who are attracted to or enthralled by the realm of gothic / electro-acoustic / doom / shoegaze, Flowers for Juno is your soundtrack for this year--much has already been given and, should the rate of releases continue, much is also still yet to come.