“The Colourflies Drop a Fuzzy Love Letter to my Adolescent ’90s”

First, I'd like to start off with a description of the Shore Dive Records label via their Bandcamp page:

"An independent record label based in Brighton, England.
Shoegaze/dreampop etc....
Unique sounds for unique people.
we hope to surprise you."

And they goddamn fucking did with The Colourflies' Honeydripper.

Having already followed Shore Dive Records, I got a notification of this in July but being on "hiatus", I couldn't get around to it.

Fortunately, I was tapped on the shoulder about it recently and right on time too!

hits play*

The Colourflies, have been kicking around since 2010 before officially releasing their debut Been There, Seen It, Lived It, Licensed It (2015) via Blackhouse Records.

Honeydripper is the Rosalia, Washington-based band's fourth release where they continue to hold the line of the Pacific Northwest punk scene. Well, really, I think that they're more like the torch bearers the scene for Mudhoney who are also from that region when comparing their sounds.

What would Colourflies frontman Matt Legard's response be to that?

Matt:

"I think we bear the torch for the alternative scene maybe? I’ve never really identified as Punk, tho it has been written that our music has the spirit. And maybe there is punk ideal in doing what you want to do sans genre, or maybe even how we dress, which is, how you feel is how you dress, be that fancy vintage clothes, a tattered t shirt, French nouveau, thrift store or a cool band long sleeve."

"Day of the Dot"

Honeydripper kicks off with "Day of the Dot", a track that captures the early '90s lo-fi sounds of SubPop à la Jack Endino.

“The sound that I hear coming from bands that are walking in
my door comes from fuzzy guitars bashing drums screaming vocals no keyboards and a general loud intent There’s a scrupulous avoidance of any mainstream musical trends and an avoidance of MIDI or anything remotely hi-tech I don’t get people with thousand-dollar effects racks coming in." - Jack Endino

Dig is one of the bands who live rent free in this cranial mush I call my brain so when I hear "Day of the Dot", I hear what "Anymore" from Dig's '93 debut might have sounded like before the polished production.

The Hendrix-style guitar solo helps ease me into whatever honey-like flow this album has. But it also reminds me of a specific artist and song I've heard before, and the closest I can get is the guitar solo in Weezer's "Say it Ain't So" which is too clean of a comparison but it's somewhere in there.

"I Am So Tired"

Then, we get to "I Am So Tired", which starts off – to make another comparison – like Sonic Youth à la Daydream Nation before it drops me right into a deep pool of grungy fuzz.

I can only imagine how intense this must be played live.

In speaking with Matt recently, we connected on a whole bunch of shared influences and others either he or I didn't know about. But "I Am So Tired" could very well be in relation to sleepless hours of mixing and perfecting this record, or any other until he became delirious. It's in those moments when you don't know what you're hearing anymore and can't tell the difference.

"Birthday"

I've always been on the lookout for a new "Birthday" song and I seemed to have found it, until I learned that this one is literally, less celebratory.

"Yes our song "Birthday" is much less celebratory, but if you want to scream Birthday at the top of your lungs, someone cutting the cake, I understand. That song is very much my attempt at creating an In Utero era Nirvana song, which I’ve never done before, it gets a little more sophisticated when the salsa part comes in, but you can kind of even hear me cop the solo a bit for "Serve the Servants". And on the lyrical side, it’s about my mother either never remembering to call me on my birthday, or more poignantly, it’s a memory I conjure when I need to cry, of when my mother, after divorcing from my dad, would call me on the phone as a kid to tell me she wasn’t going to be at my birthday party and that she would make it up to me later."

Finally, we're tapping into some of the darkness that comes from within. Though he and I are perhaps 15 or more years apart, we both gravitate – at one point in our lives – to artists who dabbled in the dark arts, like Kurt Cobain.

"Honeydripper"

I made a Sonic Youth comparison earlier and the same applies to the title track. There is also a shoegazey quality to it that I like as well.

Matt has also admitted to this being his favorite track, which makes sense as to why he named the album after it.

All the while, this band has stirred up memories and emotions in me for a distinct period which might make this album seem to walk the novelty line but that's only if you want that and I do.

"Aloha" has a Dandy Warhols vibe while "Shake Me" is structured like a traditional indie anthem.

But I also pointed to what stood out to me at this point in the album:

Me: "There are a lot of hands in the mixing of 'Honeydripper' and up until "Aloha", there's a noticeable contrast between the first and last half of the album. Only because the '90s were my high school years when grunge was part of my musical upbringing, with what I'm hearing, I can feel you attempting to capture that Jack Endino production. In fact, I feel the first half of the album is that period. If that's the case, how does it make your approach to Honeydripper different from your other albums?"

"I think you’re on to something, and maybe it’s because we were going for a Soundgarden/ Melvins approach to the production with some of the heavier stuff. I think, because we used a Grammy winning producer for "Shake Me" and really had a production helm on "Aloha" as well, those songs stand out to me as being more produced, they seem to have a little more time into them to get them just right, that being said, the guitar harmonies on the song "Great", were just as difficult to attain in a non state of the art studio, but still sound to be very much a part of the "Shake Me", "Aloha" and "Tinsley" world. I think the approach to Honeydripper was to have everything stand up on its own, everything has something a little special about it, The song "Honeydripper", was supposed to stand next to "Shake Me", as an equal counterpart as far as songwriting and execution, but if I told you how long it took to record it, you would laugh.

It's hard to get through making an album like this without making sure it has a theme or a story to tell.

Me: "You've said that 'Honeydripper' isn't really a concept album but I think about each of your releases and wonder if even unintentionally, a theme emerged from those releases in hindsight, or if they're just snapshots of a time in your life you can just look back upon. How would you see this album?"

"While I’ve never been conceptual in theme, there is a conceptual line in that some songs end in one chord and begin in the same chord, that was entirely intentional. Harmonic synergy, but as far as the songs subject matter, it’s very similar to how my mind works. While there is a through line of my personality, the other parts of my brain often take over and force music into different places, you have the extremes, and I think it is conceptual in that way. We took three days to master and sequence and it was just me and my engineer up til 3 am in my apartment or via message every night, I even went to work for ten minutes one day and thought, what am I doing here when I could be working on finishing the album, and we had an absolute deadline to turn it in to Shore Dive records and have the artwork and everything finished, I’m such a lazy piece of shit sometimes, and I really felt it in that moment, I hated myself.

While Matt and I were talking that night, it happened that a nice surprise was waiting for me in the mail.

In comparison to Honeydripper, Flavour of the Year has a entirely different aesthetic from this but just know that my collection of The Colourflies works has started.

"Scully and Mulder on the Kitchen Floor" might be the oldest song on the album as Matt wrote it long ago and was finally able to unload it on this album.

And I love the transition from "Junebug" into "Seahorse, Seahell" which alludes to being two tracks in one. "Junebug" sounds like it's off of early Smashing Pumpkins and "Seahorse, Seahell" is a straight up acoustic track, far distant from the wall of fuzz.

Matt has had to face his share of haters along the way which is likely where "Fuck You" comes in, to make that declaration.

"Quiet French Song, Angry Cloud" is a strange favorite of mine.

At this point towards the end of the album, getting away from the textures and the sonics, we have tracks that are clearly more audible as songs, giving a sense that Matt is reflecting on life.

The range of emotion seems to be different on this record. There is a heavy sense of loss. Whether you’re mourning a relationship or a death of someone close to you, or the mother you feel you never had, it gets deep, not to mention I came back and decided to make it after I came back from the European tour, so I was jet lagged and jet tagged and crazy . I hear a lot of that in this record, my dissatisfaction with life or myself or the world."

I also feel Honeydripper is seasonal in tone where it could easily sound like a year going by and the end slows down to a wintery, somber pace.

So yeah, extremes and conceptually the extremes from the quiet surf, beach boys of "Aloha", to the stoner sway of "I Am So Tired", to "Seahorse, Seahell", which was something I just came up with in my apartment while mastering the album, to "Ruby" (Soundcheck Paris) which is just that, me singing a song out of the ether in Paris to get sounds, the concept became opportunity and the excitement of it could be anything and freedom... And there is something to be said about them being snapshots in time as well. A wave goodbye on a plane across the ocean or "Shake Me" which is about swimming in the Florida gulf and not being afraid of drowning, like I almost did in the ocean as a kid, and being ready to take on the world I suppose. So many songs were just recorded in our old house, or around Christmas with snow on the ground, I think those visuals emerge in the range of emotions to me. I have the type of memory, as you can ascertain by talking with me for two hours, that I remember the exact clothing I wore when I recorded a particular song or did an overdub, so the emotional gamut is that of which I can’t but help to remember and hopefully represent, whether that be resplendent or excruciatingly painful. But that’s love and life."

But Honeydripper is more than just a nostalgic trip. Matt Legard is a bit of a "Matt Pinfield" himself when it comes to being an encyclopedia of underground music.

Well, much of what once was underground has since come up to the surface.

Honeydripper isn’t just another record—it’s a snow-globe of memory, emotion, and musical archaeology.

It's as if The Colourflies have bottled up the last slivers of a rain-soaked Washington winter—hoodies damp with drizzle, posters peeling off bedroom walls, and the glow of 120 Minutes flickering across tired adolescent eyes—and handed it back to us like a mixtape made by someone who really gets it.

There's something unmistakably '90s here, not in a kitschy, underproduced way, but in the warm crackle of the basement tape, the honest fuzz of a cracked amp, the journal-scrawled confessions buried in Matt’s lyrics.

Listening to this record feels like putting your hands around a mug of hot cocoa after wandering the gray streets of Rosalia with headphones on, heart full.