Reasons to be Cheerful in 2021...White Flowers, Sunstack Jones and Cross Wires

By Jon Milton

2020 is now behind us, and although we remain in uncertain times the promise of a vaccine means that we can start at least start looking forward to a time when live music returns, and the music scene begins its long road back to (hopefully) full recovery.  

Several exciting artists already have new releases and gigs scheduled in 2021, while others have them planned, so we thought we’d have a chat with a few of them to find out what we can be looking forward to as the year unfurls.

In the first of this series of interviews I talk to White Flowers, Sunstack Jones and Cross Wires.  

White Flowers

White Flowers first emerged at the start of 2020 with their excellent single ‘Night Drive’. A string of digital releases followed last year, also made available on limited run physical format, selling out within days. Highlights of 2020 were ‘Touring in the first three months of the year was fun - we had more planned that unfortunately had to be postponed / cancelled. Although one benefit of being in lockdown was having the time to work on new music’. 

When can we expect to hear new music from you in 2021, in digital and physical formats?

Our EP, Within a Dream will be out on vinyl and digital on January 15th, then we’ll have more releases to follow soon.  

Pandemic permitting, what gigs have you got lined up?   

We’re scheduled to play Independent Venue Week at the end of January in Birkenhead - but it’s looking unsure that this will even go ahead! Hopefully we can get some solid dates booked in as the year progresses.

Any festival appearances planned?  

Not as yet..

What are your hopes for the band in 2021?  

The main hope is to be able to get back out playing live and touring, seeing new places and meeting new people - that’s what we’ve missed most this past year, as I’m sure all bands have. 

Sunstack Jones

Sunstack Jones released one of the albums of 2020 with ‘Golden Repair’, which included the wonderful ‘How It All Went Down’ - number 7 in our festive fifty. Their highlights of 2020?

Despite the initial postponement of the release of our new LP Golden Repair, the eventual release was great garnering a 4 star review in Mojo and Steve Lamacq "urging people to investigate" it on his 6 music show. The vinyl sold out TODAY on our Bandcamp without any shows to support so it's really warmed us to know people are liking what we do. Only 15 left with the label too! 

When can we expect to hear new music from you in 2021, in digital and physical formats?  

We were due in the studio again with Simon Jones again in October. Literally the day before we locked down again. We have loads to record for the next LP which at this stage is being worked on as a double album. We would imagine digi singles will precede 🌞

Pandemic permitting, what gigs have you got lined up? 
 
We have shows organised in April, May and June at the moment - Manchester, London and Chester (re organised LP launch ha). Our European ventures to Paris, Holland and Belgium are still being looked at to re organise, not gonna be easy is it? 

Any festival appearances planned?  

There is a potential for a Dutch festival, different to the one we played a few years back, but again, God knows if euro adventures will be doable now. GRRRR. 

What are your hopes for the band in 2021?

See each other again would be the main one. Releasing our best album and not all being together to celebrate is weird and sad. After that it is to get the next LP recorded, crank everything up again and actually play for and see people again.

Cross Wires

Cross Wires released their debut album ‘A Life Extinct’ at the end of 2019, with a string of singles from the album accompanied by new tracks released in 2020. Their highlights of 2020 were getting ‘some fantastic radio last year after we released ‘A Life Extinct’ from Steve Lamacq and Tom Robinson on BBC 6 Music, John Kennedy on Radio X and Black Flag legend Henry Rollins on KCRW in America. Getting played on those amazing shows was such a buzz for us’. 

When can we expect to hear new music from you in 2021, in digital and physical formats?  

‘Distracted Technique’ the M.A.W remix of our single ‘Distraction Technique’ will be released on 8th January across all streaming services. He has taken our 3 minute New Wave Punk track and turned it in to a 7 minute weird Electro banger! John Kennedy played it on his Xposure show on Radio x last week and people really seemed to like it so that was cool. We had planed to put out a series of songs written and recorded in a day at our rehearsal space ‘The Control Rooms’ like we did with our recently released single ‘Hall of Mirrors’ but we’ve not been able to get in to the studio because of the lockdowns. We will hopefully get to record and release another of those types of tracks in the first half of next year. The idea is to hopefully release an EP made up of tracks recorded this way. Probably digitally and CD I would imagine. We’ve written about 80 percent of album 2 and will hopefully start recording that in the summer. 

Pandemic permitting, what gigs have you got lined up?   

We have a gig for Kick Out The Jams at The Amersham Arms in New Cross on 18th March with National Service, The Institutes and The Palpitations. I’m not sure if that will come too soon because of the tier system but hopefully it will still go ahead even if it ends up being moved. Really great line up. We are also supposed to be playing at Hot Box in Chelmsford In April. We played a live stream gig there in September and it’s a fantastic venue. It’s better than a lot of venues we’ve played in London and the people involved with the venue are all amazing. Proper passionate music lovers. I  highly recommend people get down and support that venue when it’s open again. You won’t regret it.  

Any festival appearances planned?  

2 so far. 1 I can tell you about and 1 that I can’t because it’s hasn’t been announced yet. The one I can tell you about is Shiiine On in Minehead. We are really really looking forward to that. There’s some fantastic bands on the line up. The Coral, Black Grape, Glasvegas, Peter Hook and The Light. Lots of our friends and families are coming so it’s going to be a cracking Weekend. 

What are your hopes for the band in 2021?

Hopefully we get to play a lot more gigs next year. I’d imagine the first half of the year will still be pretty rubbish in terms of putting gigs on but the second half should be much better. Getting album 2 recorded is the main ambition for us though. I was listening back to some of the demos today and I think we’ve really taken it up a level. All the tracks are quite different from ‘A Life Extinct’ There’s a track called ‘Hold On’ that’s potentially the best thing we’ve ever written.