Magical drinking, indeed: The Broken West’s Ross Flournoy finds the Apex (Manor)

Kevin Bronson on
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Ross Flournoy was bowed but not broken when his indie-pop band the Broken West disintegrated more than a year ago. “I had no idea what I was going to do,” he said of his year of stewing, soul-searching and, eventually, songwriting. “Being on Merge, it’s not like you break up your band and then you automatically get a new deal.”

He had sequestered himself and worked on a few new songs, “but I’d been in a bit of a funk,” he says – until he read Carrie Brownstein’s “Monitor Mix” column on NPR, in which the ex-Sleater-Kinney guitarist challenged songwriters to record a tune over a weekend and submit it. He ripped off “Under the Gun,” and with that momentum (and an assist from collaborator Adam Vine) he wrote the rest of what would be become “The Year of Magical Drinking,” the first album by his new band, Apex Manor.

||| Stream: “Under the Gun”

The album title is a nod to Joan Didion’s memoir “The Year of Magical Thinking,” and it’s clear from Flournoy’s sharp songwriting focus that he ingested plenty of ideas with his drinks. The first batch of songs from Apex Manor are every bit as catchy as his former band’s jangly sweetness, but here his music adds body mass, the guitars rougher and the rhythms more urgent. Apex Manor’s “Year” does have exceedingly tender moments – “Love is just a figure of speech,” Flournoy sings on “Holy Roller” – but overall this is not the sound of somebody crying in his beers.

“When the Broken West first got signed, I had an overly idealized notion of what it would be like … you know, band of brothers and all that,” Flournoy says. “After two years on the road, we were just over, even though [the breakup] was all amicable.

“I wanted to be the master of my own destiny, so I just kinda decided I was going to write songs and not a fuck about what was going on in indie-rock, or what was in vogue in the world of music,” Flournoy says. “I felt like I had carte blanche.”

Joining Flournoy in Apex Manor are his ex-Broken West mate Brian Whelan, Vine and Andy Creighton of the World Record. “The Year of Magical Drinking” will be out Jan. 25.

||| Way back when: The Broken West

Photo by Chloe Aftel