A lot of A Chaos Of Flowers (and by extension also this review) relies on familiarity with its predecessor and paired album, Nature Morte. One might instantly notice the complete inversion in background color on the two albums. But what's presented lies in the same world. -1 is also a number, just like 1. They have more in common than not. A Chaos Of Flowers, with or without Nature Morte, is still a Big Brave album. A lot of what I've learned about them is present here, and when you hear that voice and the distortion in the guitar feedback you can't mistake it for anyone else. But it's also the one Big Brave album that sounds most unlike any other. Maybe even more than the one that's an actual collaboration. Allow me to explain.
Time and time again I've praised Big Brave for their heavy branch of minimalism and what I've seen dubbed as "anxiety metal". Their previous album, Nature Morte, already had hints of some very different palette cleansers and a shift in approach that (re)introduced more touches of Appalachian folk and a greater touch of softness. The yin in that album's yang, is now the yang of A Chaos Of Flowers. While some slightly anxiety inducing louder drone still remains in it, the yang of Nature Morte, that is now this album's yin. I may or may not misuse those terms, but I think that complementary but still intertwined image is exactly how I'd describe the relationship between the two albums.
Lyrics were always important for Big Brave, but it feels like a lot more of this album is built upon them, especially since the seed of this album lies within Robin Wattie's exploration of different perspective in poetry, having noticed that a lot of it comes from the male perspective, seeking alternatives, discovering something very relatable, and using those to build A Chaos Of Flowers' lyrical side. Even the drone feels more sparse and even quite warmer this time around, more Nadja than Swans, but a lot of the instrumental side feels more ambient and folky and bluesy and at times also quite glitchy. There's some nice uses of extra instrumentation from some guests. Some sax from a nice darkjazz touch, some synths for a bit of darkwave, more guitars for more post-rock line textures in the drone.
As a whole it is an even more patience-requiring album for a band that's already patience-requiring. This smaller sound does have a small bottle at a very reasonable 40 minutes of runtime, and a lot of it is rewarding, but that reward is the least instantaneous that Big Brave ever delivered.
This is not the easiest band to get into but I admire them for what they are. However, this album doesn't quite sit well for me, the distortion and feedback just gets too much for me in the end.