by Giliann Karon
All four members of Tomato Flower - Ruby Mars (bass), Jamison Murphy (guitar/vocals), Austyn Wohlers (guitar/vocals), and Mike Alfieri (drums) - squish together on a couch, where they fill in each other’s sentences and pass the proverbial mic to the next member with ease, only pausing to burst into laughter. Each answer unfurls into a tangent that pulls back the curtain on their ambitious songwriting process and desire to see their best friends succeed individually and together.
Tomato Flower used to long for a more forgiving world, but have since collided with reality. While Wohlers and Murphy split while writing the album, No is far more complex than a trite “breakup album.” They’ve learned things the hard way and No is their response. The album “embraces a kind of brutal realism, a confrontation of life that only happens when you wizen up a little bit,” reads a press release.
No builds off the success from Tomato Flower’s first two EPs but trades decorum for freakiness. Each distorted, kaleidoscopic track nods to earlier psychedelic movements, while remaining fresh and innovative. It brims with dichotomies and dissonances in a deviation from their earlier, world-building work. They gingerly blur math rock, avant pop, and psych in a way that only a group who’s been playing together for so long could do.
photo credit: Missy Malouff
GILIANN KARON: How would you describe your music to someone who's never listened to it before?
JAMISON MURPHY: When I’m asked that, I usually say we’re a rock band and try to divert the question. But if someone presses me, I just say it’s an “experimental rock band.”
AUSTYN WOHLERS: I used to say “sounds like Stereolab,” but I suppose that’s less true now.
MIKE ALFIERI: Strange but catchy.
GK: You’re all longtime friends. How’d you guys meet?
JM: Austyn, Ruby, and I all met at summer camp in Valdosta, Georgia in 2013, then re-encountered each other in various ways when we were in college in Athens and Atlanta. Ruby and I have been playing in some capacity together since 2013. Austyn and I have been playing together since 2015. And then Tomato Flower formed when Austyn and I moved to Baltimore in 2019 and met Mike.
AW: Mike and I met at High Zero, which is an experimental improvisational music festival. He asked if I play music. I said yes, and that we were looking for a drummer. He saw Jamison and I play just the first couple of songs with a little drum machine at True Vine. He wanted to play with us and that was the formation for a while, but we were still looking for a bassist.
Jamison, Ruby, and I were in a previous band in Atlanta called Paradise Montage. Eventually we were like “We miss Ruby. Maybe we can get her to come play with us.”
RUBY MARS: I was the bassist in the previous band and I moved to Baltimore to join Tomato Flower.
GK: What made you realize you wanted to make music together?
MA: Fate! And I liked the demos they sent me.
GK: What did you guys learn from touring with Animal Collective and how is this reflected on your album?
JM: It was mostly learning how certain aesthetic touchstones with the band fit into a longer history, specifically the history of psychedelic music. They reacquainted us with the Incredible String Band and turned us onto West Coast experimental rock bands from the 90s that I didn’t know like Thinking Fellers Union. They helped me get in touch with musical traditions I didn’t know about.
AW: Yeah, they invited Thinking Fellers Union to our San Francisco show but they couldn’t make it. On tour, Josh (Deakin) was reading Rose Simpson’s memoir Muse, Odalisque, Handmaiden about her time in the Incredible String Band, which we then listened to a lot in the van, and when we came back from that tour we had a lot of the songs written, but still a couple more to write. The last few songs really leaned into that psychedelic quality.
MA: I observed a lot from watching them do their soundcheck and how they operate on stage. They’re a band that has such longevity and you can see how they’re concentrating their energy into putting on a show. I took note of their focus during the soundcheck how everything led up to the moment they were on stage. There were a lot of great takeaways from behind the scenes and it was cool to see how they do it.
RM: We really look up to those four people in terms of how we carry ourselves as artists. They were all kind to us and interested in our art. It was inspiring to see artists who have made their lives revolve around playing music with their closest friends. They inspired me to meet with kindness and interest.
MA: They were so down to earth and generous. They’re incredible people.
GK: That’s so sweet and wonderful to hear. Could you tell me about the decision to title your first full length album, No? Did you spend a while going back and forth on names, or did it come pretty naturally?
JM: We thought about some others, but we wanted something short and monosyllabic. The reference points were King Crimson's album, Red, or the names of most of the Jesus Lizard albums, like Shot. Also, we wanted something negative and critical. It felt pretty natural. And for whatever reason, we’ll always say the word “no” in our songs or when working on songs.
RM: “No” is a lot of babies’ first words, so maybe we can capitalize on royalties.
GK: No is all about rejecting conventions and forging your own path. What conventions are you rejecting, and is there anything from your past work that you're trying to shed?
AW: Maybe a certain formalism Jamison and I had the first few years of playing music together. We approached songwriting from a place of coldness and interest in genre. We knew what we wanted to do when we were making a song.
For example, when Jamison and I wrote “Taking My Time” on our EP Construction, we wanted to make a Dionne Warwick or Burt Bacharach-style song about heartbreak. We were kids and hadn’t experienced much of the world. We were just imagining what the world was like, whereas the songs on No come from a place of more genuine emotion.
MA: Those formal boundaries and any kind of preconceptions about what something is supposed to be. We’re just letting things happen, but I don’t think of it as shedding or leaving anything behind. I’m trying to connect my past with what I’m doing at this moment.
GK: Compared to your previous work, No is far more racing. It packs so much emotion and friction into songs that are all under three minutes. What's the rush?
JM: It partially has to do with using pop music from the early sixties as models for songwriting. It’s a vestige inherited from technological limitations of how music was disseminated at the time.
An economy of style is very central to our songwriting. We can certainly stretch it, but condensing our songs is pretty important to the band.
AW: Oftentimes, we’ll have demos that we chop up into their essential parts. Like Jamison said, it’s always been how we do things. We have a couple of songs for a future album that are around four minutes, but I like the idea of somebody wanting to play the song again instead of getting bored of it.
GK: Do you think longer and dreamier songs could be a suitable sound for your messages about realism and confrontation?
JM: The type of song that I am most compelled by would be a song like “Sally and Me”, which is nearly linear but not exactly linear. I’d love to have songs that don’t repeat and have new ideas for an extended period of time. But I think that I’ll always hesitate about hanging out on any one idea for a very long time.
MA: Maybe we'll use reverb.
GK: On your first EPs, you longed for a more sustainable and loving world. No is a lot more pessimistic, discordant, and urgent. Would you say you've become more realistic with what kind of world you can create, or are you angrier that it hasn't happened yet?
JM: In part, it goes back to what Austyn was saying earlier about our personal lives colliding with reality in different ways and then responding to that in a record. Speaking for myself, I think the political valence and the place where we are politically is very much the same between the records.
With this one, we’re somewhat more invested in the critical stance and the utopian angle contained within it. Any criticism of the world has inside of it, the other world that it could imagine. They're not quite as separable as negation versus projected positive vision. They’re imbricated.
AW: It’s a shifting terminology or new angle.
GK: What inspired the departure from softer textures and themes on your first two EPs?
RM: It was just where our ears were at. This album is heavy on the distortion, but there are still a few moments of bliss.
AW: Speaking for myself, I did my MFA in Indiana between the two and I really got the midwest ice hammer. Where I was, the music scene was all punk and emo and metal. I was listening to a lot of the Jesus Lizard, who I don’t think we sound like, except for maybe “Jem,” and just kind of leaning into the heavy midwest thing. We’ve always listened to heavier music, but this was the first time it felt like something we could tap into.
MA: I think sonically, it shifted because we recorded in a studio instead of a bedroom. We insisted on doing something that was going to fill a bigger space. Some of that rawness just came from that practicality.
GK: How do you balance using music as an outlet for your malaise without creating something that's too depressing?
AW: This is not a depressing album. I think it can go way lower. We could bring it all the way down if we had to. I don't really think music necessarily changes the world, but at the risk of sounding cheesy, it can definitely save somebody. When you're in some kind of state and you're clinging to a song, album, or book like it’s the only thing in the world.
JM: It’s pure sublimation. You just gotta sublimate it all. Art of all kinds can be an emotional anchor.
GK: Last question! What song are you most excited to play on tour?
RM: We have a demo, tentatively titled “Boudica,” which is one of the longer songs we were talking about earlier. It’s fun and it challenges us.
AW: I’m really excited to play “Sally and Me.” It’s very warm and fun to play. There’s a drop in the middle section where everyone gets creative and grooves the fuck out.
MA: I’m really looking forward to playing “Saint” and the title track “No.” That’s a fresh one in the set.
JM: “Sally” is my favorite one to play because a lot of our earlier work was very gridded. It had tempo and time signature changes that all happened in a very snappy way. I like songs, like in “Jem,” that are floating and more non-gridded rhythmically.
Listen to No out now on Ramp Local and check them out on tour this spring.