Friday Mixtape: Sunflower Bean curate a mix of quite literally blue songs

This week’s Friday Mixtape comes from New York-born and based Sunflower Bean. Made of up Nick Kivlen, Jacob Faber and Julia Cumming, the band are recognised as one of the hardest working, with seemingly constant touring and releasing their second record Twentytwo in Blue last month.

In honour of the record, this week’s mixtape is made up of all songs to do with the colour blue, the feelings and connotations that come with it, and the many, many songs that include it in their titles.

Why have you picked these songs – what do they remind you of or make you feel?

Our album is called Twentytwo in Blue because the colour blue kept coming back to us while we were writing it. When you make a record, you aren’t just making the music, you’re creating the world the music is going to live in. Blue felt like the all-encompassing mood, melancholy yet hopeful, a shell of something sad but resilient and beautiful underneath.

We wanted to honour this with a playlist of other songs revolving around “blue” and what the colour meant to them.

When or where should this mixtape be listened to?

It’s an eclectic mix, so I’d say it’s more about the headspace than the actual place you listen. Come to it with an open mind!

What did you listen to as teenagers? What kind of posters did you have on your bedroom walls?

We are just out of teenagehood, so I’d say our tastes have stayed pretty similar. We are all unabashed fans of guitar music as a genre, creative rock being made throughout the last 50 years (and into the future!)

Can you tell us a little about your new record?

I think our earlier answer explains the blue inspiration, but in general, we wanted to make a record more stripped back than our first, in the sense of not wanting to hide behind anything. We wanted to go deeper into ourselves, rather than outward.

If a feature film about Sunflower Bean was to be made, what song would be on the trailer and why?

Maybe it would be our song Creation Myth because that would cover not only the beginning of all time but the beginning of our band!